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How to color-code your notes in Google Docs
Color-coding only works if you can remember what each color means three weeks later. The trick is fewer colors, each with a job, and a way to get the notes back out.
Use three colors, four at most
Every system that fails starts with eight colors. Pick three that answer the questions you always ask of a text, and give the fourth to whatever is specific to your work:
| Color | Students | Editors | Researchers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Key facts to memorize | Lines that need a rewrite | Findings to cite |
| Green | Sources to cite | Fact-check this | Methods worth borrowing |
| Purple | Questions for class | Ask the author | Disagreements with the paper |
| Optional fourth | Exam hints from the lecturer | Style-guide issues | Quotes for the write-up |
Write the meanings down at the top of the doc the first time. After a week you will not need the legend.
Set the colors up once
The built-in highlight tool in Docs (the marker icon on the toolbar) gives you a palette, and it is easy to grab a slightly different yellow each time. That matters later, because any tool that groups highlights by color treats two yellows as two groups. Two ways to stay consistent:
- In the palette, add your three colors as custom colors (the + under the grid). They stay in the "Custom" row for that document.
- Use an add-on that stores named highlighters. In Highlight Harvest the names travel with your Google account, so "Key facts" is the same yellow in every document you open.
Highlight less than you think
A page that is half yellow says nothing. Highlight the shortest span that would still make sense on its own in a list: a claim, a number, a name and date. If you would not want the sentence pasted into your summary, do not highlight it.
Get the notes back out
This is the step most people skip, and it is why color-coding feels pointless. At the end of a reading session, pull every highlight into one list grouped by color. Yellow becomes your revision sheet, green becomes your bibliography to-do, purple becomes the questions you bring to class or the notes you send the author. See how to extract all highlighted text from a Google Doc for the ways to do that, including a one-click version.
Highlight Harvest does all of this from a sidebar in Google Docs: named highlighters, one-click apply, and a harvest button that gathers every highlight into a list grouped by color. $9 once, 14-day free trial →