Highlight and Quote actions in OWA in Office 365

I don’t usually spend much time in OWA, so perhaps these two new features have been available for a while, but this is the first time I’ve seen them pop up. Since I wasn’t able to find any documentation on them, it’s time for another quick blog post.

To see the new features in action, all you have to do is select some text in the message body. A small overlay will pop up, exposing the Highlight and Quote buttons as shown on the screenshot below:

051717 1254 Highlightan1

As the name suggests, Highlight marks the text. The light-blue color used however makes the highlight barely distinguishable from “regular” text, and I haven’t been able to find any option to control the color. To remove the highlight effect from a text, simply click on it and select the Remove option.

Selecting the Quote option on the other hand opens the Compose window with the selected text formatted in a separate paragraph and the cursor placed below it. The original message is also preserved, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to add additional quotes.

051717 1254 Highlightan2

Still, the feature looks useful 🙂

7 thoughts on “Highlight and Quote actions in OWA in Office 365

  1. Angry User says:

    please turn off this “feature” many times I recieve data in emails that I have to copy and paste into spreadsheet. This makes it difficult to do.

    Reply
    1. Vasil Michev says:

      You know I don’t work for Microsoft, right? 🙂 Leave a feedback on the usability of the feature or possible improvements via the support channels or at UserVoice.

      Reply
  2. Kevin says:

    Has anyone figured out how to turn this off? I have the same issue as David. I can’t copy and paste anymore because this popup steals the focus after the text is selected.

    Reply
  3. david says:

    this is so annoying, it has also stopped me copying and pasting from any email!!!!

    Reply
    1. Vasil Michev says:

      Sorry Alex, I don’t think you can. You can leave feedback over at the UserVoice forums in order for the devs to provide us with the relevant controls to switch this on/off.

      Reply
  4. James Ward says:

    Noticed this today – I wish there was a log that detailed all iterative releases on the office products. There’s an announcement page, but that only contains the bigger items, not things like this.

    It’s all very Apple

    Reply

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