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3 Ways to Improve Your Highlights

Highlighters, crayons, markers, and pens are staples for personal Bible study. When you want to remember a passage, you mark it to make it stand out from the rest of the text. When it comes to digital Bibles we often neglect using highlights as a part of our study methods. Sure, we may highlight a favorite verse or passage, but most don’t go any further than that. I want to open up a world of highlighting possibilities for you in the Olive Tree Bible App. Hopefully this will improve your Bible study.

HOW TO HIGHLIGHT

First, let me give you a refresher on the two ways to make a highlight in the app.

VERSE HIGHLIGHTS

The most popular way to make a highlight in our app is to highlight an entire verse. To do this, tap the verse number and select “Highlight”. If you want to highlight several verses, increase the range to your desired selection, then choose your color. This method is useful if you want to have your highlights appear across various Bible translations. Since these are tagged on a verse level, they will appear in all your Bibles.

Highlighting Olive Tree 1

WORD-BASED HIGHLIGHTS

You also have the option to make word based highlights that are resource specific. To do this, simply select your desired text, and then follow the same steps to highlight as above.

Highlighting Olive Tree 2

MAKE YOUR OWN HIGHLIGHTER STYLES

One advantage of using Olive Tree is that you aren’t limited to default highlighter colors. You have the ability to create your own highlighter colors and styles to suit your needs. This is the first step in making highlights more useful in your study.

There are a couple different ways you can get to the new highlighter menu. First, go to the main menu and select highlights. Then tap edit and choose “Add Highlighter”.  Alternatively, you can reach this menu by selecting a verse or text to highlight. Tap Highlight, then select the “More” icon. Lastly, choose “Add Highlighter”.

Highlighting Olive Tree 3

Once you’ve reached this screen you are presented with a few different options. First, you can give your highlighter a name in the Label field. You can either name it the color you’re going to create, or you can get creative! Give the highlight a specific meaning.

For example, you can have all references to the Holy Spirit marked the same way. Give a highlighter the name “Holy Spirit”.

From there you can select whether you want it to be a traditional highlight or underline. And lastly, you have the ability to customize how that highlight or underline will appear. Select the intensity, thickness, and the color.

Highlighting Olive Tree 5
Highlighting Olive Tree 4

Once you’ve made all the highlighters you need, you’re ready to start using them in your study. And, remember, it’s just as easy to make new highlighters as you need them; just follow these steps.

ADD NOTES TO THE MIX

Another way to highlight and emphasize key passages is to use the notes functionality within the app. This works just like highlighting, except you choose “Note” instead of “Highlight” when selecting a verse or text. A neat feature of notes is your ability to select an icon to represent what the note is about.

This is helpful when taking notes on sermons. It’s also useful for calling out a part of the text. If something is extra important, you might want to add a star. Or, if it’s puzzling, you can select the question mark icon.

Even if you don’t put anything in the note, these icons will appear in your Bible. They can serve as an additional layer of highlighting and meaning.

Highlighting Olive Tree 6

GREAT FOR INDUCTIVE STUDY

Did you know there are Bible study methods centered around highlighting? One of the more popular methods is the Precepts Inductive Bible Study method popularized by Kay Arthur. With the infinite highlighting possibilities you can create in the app, you can certainly adapt it for your needs. Click here to learn more about the Inductive Bible Study method from Precepts Ministries International.

Experiment with highlights and notes icons to create a Bible study method that works for you. Let us know what you discover in a comment below!

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21 Comments

  1. Steve

    The ability to adjust the size of the notes icon especially on a device such as a tablet would be great.

  2. Donald Keiffer

    Yes I agree with Steve. It would be great to be able to adjust the size of the note icons.

  3. Donald Keiffer

    It would be very helpful if we could use the preset colors in the App Settings/Color settings and add a category for Highlighters so we can use those colors which I like more but cannot seem to get from the other color chart.

  4. Donald Keiffer

    By the way, this was a great presentation.
    Thank you

    • Cierra Klatt

      Thanks, Donald! We’ll think on the note icon request. About the colors – if you look at the 5th screenshot in this blog, you’ll see that we have a large color spectrum that you can choose from for highlighters! You just have to pick the hue (left to right), intensity (top to bottom), and then you can make them darker with the slider adjustment at the bottom of the menu! If you play around with it a little bit, I’m sure you could get a color similar to the one you are wanting because the possibilities are endless. Let me know if you have other questions!

      • Donald Keiffer

        I have tried this for over a year an have not had good successand feel if we could use the preset colors in the App Settings/Color settings and add a category for Highlighters so we can use those colors which I like more but cannot seem to get from the other color chart.

  5. Dominique Robin

    Thanks for the write-up! This says more about me than the app itself, but I’m still trying to get used to the notion of having a highlight be book-specific if I choose not to highlight (or underline) an entire verse. For example, if I wanted to use a yellow highlighter to emphasize important words that have special meaning in the original language. Unfortunately, that highlight would only show up in the book I originally selected. Having this feature modified/changed would be a game-changer for me in personal reading, study, and preparation.

  6. Richard

    I especially enjoy the transparency level … be the “underline” highlight style.

  7. Drew

    I’m new to Olive Tree. 2 weeks in, on an iPad and Windows laptop. I was reading an eBook yesterday and highlighting away when I thought I’d like to see all my highlights in the resource window (the pane to the right or bottom of main content). But the only way to access my highlights I found on the iPad is via a popup.

    On my Windows laptop it’s a little different. I can see my Annotations (highlights) on the right pane. However, the listing is very rudimentary.

    1. Can I see my highlights in the resource pane (right/bottom) on my iPad?

    2. Can I see just the highlights of the resource being read?

    3. Do I have any control over the display of my highlights in the Annotations list? They currently show in a compact kind of style. I’d love to have a fuller display, like how a Commentary will have abbreviated listings reading a bible version but if you click on one then you can see the entirety of all the notes.

    4. Can I export or copy all my highlights? I’d love the ability to paste into Word and work them into an outline or paper.

    If any of these can’t be done, are they reasonable suggestions for a future version?

    Thank you. Clearly a noobie here, sorry. But I am very excited to learn fast and get good! 🙂

    • Cierra Klatt

      Hey, Drew! Sorry for the late response. Would you mind copy/pasting these questions into an email and sending it to support@olivetree.com? They will be able to give you a lot more information than I can here. Thanks!

      • Elsa

        Hello, I have the same questions about hghlights as Drew. Did you gave him answers about highlights? I

  8. Toby Thomas

    For some reason neither way suggested here allows me to create a new color highlight! I’m on a windows desktop computer.

    When I go to highlights i only get the standard colors and no “More” tab.

  9. Natanael Muniz

    Hi,

    Is there any way to highlight across multiple bibles? I would like to keep some of my highlights consistent or if its possible to export them from one bible to another that would be great.

    Thanks
    Pastor Nat

    • Cierra Klatt

      Hey, Nat! If you select the verse number to make a highlight, the highlight will appear across different translations for you. 🙂 Let me know if you have any other questions!

  10. Paulus

    It would be great to have a button to enable apple pencil and make written notes and highlights which will then not interfere with going to the next page or other actions. When deselecting the button all returns to normal. Since using an ipad 2018 and pencil it opens a whole new world and makes current functionality of highlighting unpleasant and cumbersome.

  11. Todd Berends

    I am searching for the way to recall the highlighted text. Where do i go to see what i have highlighted?

    • Cierra Loux

      Hey Todd! In order to see all of your highlights, open the main menu (top left) and then select “highlights.” You can either select them by the type of highlighter you used, or select “All Highlighters.”

  12. Allan

    Great App!!!

    Is there a way to sort the different Highlights by the name we have designated them?

  13. Nakisha

    Is there a way to highlight content within the popup window without having to open the popup window in the main window or the parallel window?

    • Cierra Loux

      Sorry Nakisha, there isn’t a way to do that at this time!