How to format all of the whitespace on a Paragraph in Outlook 2010?

Question

I've typed up an email with some text, then an indented bullet list with a few sub-bullets and a few more paragraphs. Here's a screencap of "part" of it.

Here's what I've done:

• Highlight 6 lines with bullet points + the indented paragraphs
• Click the Format Text option at the top of the New Email window
• Select the Paint Bucket tool on the Paragraph section of the ribbon and pick a color

This only paints the portion of the email with actual text, excluding the whitespace to the left.

Is there a way I can force it to color the entire line, rather than just the portions that have stuff?

Answer 1

Drawing on the answer here, you can't do this using the paint bucket tool. You can instead do this by putting your text inside a single-celled table, then shading that cell with the background color you want.

I achieve this by selecting the lines I wanted shaded, going to the Insert ribbon, choosing Table then Insert Table. Right-click on the table and select Merge Cells, then right-click again and select Borders and Shading.

In the Borders tab, choose None. In the Shading tab, use the Fill drop-down to choose the color you want.

Here's what it looked like for me, after selecting only a portion of my text: