Easier highlighting?

[atarei]

Hey guys,

I use microsoft word 2007 a lot. One of my main quirks in using it is I always like to use 5 preset colours to highlight key words in my word documents.

My question is how do I make a shortcut to make ease the change? Going back and forth to change the highlight colour at the top bar is just so tiring and time consuming. I wish there were something like say ctrl + a, b, c, d, e for the 5 different colours (something to that effect).



Just in case, could we also kind of like just set effects such as bolding that will automatically apply to whatever comes next after your typing? I'm referring to the highlight of course - selecting and highlighting the words is such a pain.

Alternatively, if someone can suggest the usage of drawing tablets like bamboo fun could be used to ease the situation?

I have tried adding more shortcut for the highlight colour changer but they don't allow that.

In the same context, I actually love using boxes of different colour (shapes) to emphasise labels of a picture. (by overlapping the boundaries with the labels) I would appreciate if I could sort of set a function that enables me to just pick the boxes anytime I want in any new documents?

Thanx ! =)