Microsoft Outlook for Mac: Highlight & Font Color Issues When Composing Emails

JT 20 Reputation points
2026-06-23T20:16:37.74+00:00

Version 16.108 (26041219)

Tahoe OS 26.5.1 (25F80)

I recently started experiencing font and highlight color issues with Outlook. Examples:

  • Red is more salmon pink.
  • Dark purple is more bright lavender.
  • Any color highlighter blacks out all text making it unreadable.

I've tried a few fixes I saw worked for other people, including changing my Outlook settings to light instead of dark or system and installing Segoe UI font.

The Chrome extension of Outlook works without issue. It's just the system application that is broken. This is super frustrating and only appears to be a recent phenomenon.

2026-06-23_13-14-24

Outlook | MacOS | New Outlook for Mac | For business
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Answer accepted by question author

Hin-V 16,155 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-06-23T21:23:44.1266667+00:00

Hi @JT

Thank you for reaching out. 

Based on your description, the behavior appears to be isolated to the Outlook desktop application. Since Outlook on the web is displaying as expected and the behavior occurs only in the desktop client, this likely indicates a client-side rendering issue related to your current Outlook version.

To help resolve this issue, please ensure that your Outlook for Mac is updated to the latest version. After updating, kindly restart both Outlook and your Mac to ensure all changes are fully applied. I have tested this on my own Mac devices (Version 16.110 and the latest version), and the colors are displaying correctly. Please give this a try and let me know if the issue persists. 

To better understand your situation and provide more targeted assistance, could you please help confirm the following: 

Have there been any recent changes to your device, such as macOS updates, Outlook updates, or account configuration changes? Or did the issue appear unexpectedly? 

After updating, could you test the behavior again on your device and, if possible, compare it with another device using the same build to see if the issue still occurs? 

Any updates would be appreciated. 

Please understand that our initial reply may not always immediately resolve the issue. However, with your help and more detailed information, we can work together to find a solution.  

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread. 

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  1. JT 20 Reputation points
    2026-06-23T23:22:25.2466667+00:00

    Hi @Hin-V - Thank you for looking into this! I reinstalled Office on my Mac and this seems to have solved the issue.

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