diff --git a/emailcommon/src/com/android/emailcommon/utility/TextUtilities.java b/emailcommon/src/com/android/emailcommon/utility/TextUtilities.java
index 1e0abd9d8..d7070216e 100644
--- a/emailcommon/src/com/android/emailcommon/utility/TextUtilities.java
+++ b/emailcommon/src/com/android/emailcommon/utility/TextUtilities.java
@@ -33,8 +33,9 @@ public class TextUtilities {
     // Highlight color is yellow, as in other apps.
     // TODO Push for this to be a global (style-related?) constant
     private static final int HIGHLIGHT_COLOR_INT = Color.YELLOW;
+    // We AND off the "alpha" from the color (i.e. 0xFFFFFF00 -> 0x00FFFF00)
     /*package*/ static final String HIGHLIGHT_COLOR_STRING =
-        '#' + Integer.toHexString(HIGHLIGHT_COLOR_INT);
+        '#' + Integer.toHexString(HIGHLIGHT_COLOR_INT & 0x00FFFFFF);
 
     // This is how many chars we'll allow in a snippet
     private static final int MAX_SNIPPET_LENGTH = 200;