Acrobat DC Highlighting- How to highlight in a straight line...?

You can get the same result with the Line setting in Drawing Tools in the Comments view, if you take the transparency right down and use a big line thickness.

Hello everyone!

Thank YOU JIPJIPNET!! for the image and the example. I do believe you are correct . I would like to do a English 1.0 for those of us that feel as if we are on that level. 🙂

Before I do, I would like to also say that for those who say this is a new tool it is not I have used it for well over 6 years probably twice as long as that. I'd also like to say that this is my opinion and understanding. 

I don't know how the document was scanned from the scanner or multifunction machine or other. But with my brother multifunction colored printer I am able to scan a document in as a file, as text (this does OCR automatically), as in image, along with other options. Stands for Optical Character Recognition. If your file was scanned in as a document/PDF or an image your file will have to be scanned, within acrobat, to OCR to use the "cursor"  highlighter tool. The one that everybody has been speaking about. Otherwise,  an image is what you have on screen/displayed in Adobe. To highlight an image acrobat will display the circular highlighter over the images (if any) and text parts alike. After you have recognize the text using "Scan & OCR" you should be able to highlight it with a "cursor" highlighter. When highlighting this way you might find that the entire word of your text may not be highlighted. You may be missing the punctuation from highlighting or the first/last letter of a word are unhighlighted. As you will see in JIPJIPNET example. The green highlighted portion does not quite clinging to the entire words 100%. This could happened for several reasons......

 To help with this a little bit I have attached a link that will show you how to scan a document and recognize the text. In the newest version of Adobe Acrobat DC this can be found by going to "All tools" >> "Scan & OCR". I'm so bored This video walks you through how to use the "Scan and OCR" feature .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxOL9-jH2o

Do not forget it To close out that all through a sidebar otherwise what you doing next may not work right. You can also use edit to fill the text background to highlights or close "All tools" and continue highlighting using the regular tool bar.

This tool also used to draw straight if you held downshift or control If I could only figure out how to do that in the current version!! If you get the wrong cursor you keep it straight ish it will straighten out minor bumps In your line but it will not straighten out if there's big bumps.... if anybody has a resolution to this I would appreciate it 'cause I don't know why I can't get it to happen. 

I hope this helps somebody at the very least if maybe put in different language it will help open it to more people the original answer from JIPJIPNET . 🙂

Have a blessed day!!

HOW TO FIX THIS ISSUE:

If you need to highlight text on a PDF but you see a small circle instead of a text cursor icon (looks like " I "), this is how to fix it.  Export the PDF as a Word document (trust me, this will work) and save the file.  Then, open the Word document and export/publish/save as a PDF.  Open this new, updated PDF file.  Now when you need to highlight the text, you will see the text cursor icon (" I ").

TRY67's answer is partially right.  You must OCR the document so Adobe recognizes the words as "TEXT".  If you don't OCR then the Highligher tool says... oh this isn't text... it's actually a picture.  So it does the best i can and lets you draw the same color highlighting you have selected over whatever you move the mouse over.  It takes a steady hand and it's treated differently by PDF reading programs.  So if you really want to properly highlight a document then you need to OCR the document, save it and only then use the highlighter to.

This tool auto-straightens short or quick strokes. Do NOT attempt to "draw" the highlight line over the entire section of text you are wanting highlighted. Once you have created the short "straight" line, exit out of the highlight tool. Now click the highlight you created and you can stretch it horizontally, vertically, or both and this will keep the line horizontal with the sqiggly effect.

[I am using Acrobat Pro DC]

Hold down the CTRL key while highlighting the text your want marked. If your line is reasonably straight, when you release the mouse and CTRL key, the application will then straighten it out.

Then you can actually select the highlighting as if it was an image, which it actually is, and move it around.  I have not figured out how to change its shape.

You can make the yellow circle highlighter into a straight line by holding down control as you highlight. It looks wobbly as you're highlighting but straightens up once you're done. You do have to keep it pretty straight when you're drawing though.

When I go to the edit pane the program forces OCR conversion.  When that happens I cannot highlight with the "circle" (which on mine straightens itself out), but highlights with a "square" and doesn't highlight what I want but jumps to the nearest text it "read".  I should be able to choose, not have it choose for me.  I think I know what I want to highlight better than this

program.

Adobe Acrobat is terrible software - you'd think in 2016, they'd have figured out how add the ability to highlight in straight lines...Add a shift key function, like MS Paint at least...Terrible.

Thanks for all the answers and tips. I found that for the documents that I receive (mostly scanned ie non-text files), I have to convert them from the scan "photo" to text using the green "edit PDF" link on the right of the page when I open the document. Once the document is converted, I can highlight, edit and add text using the links and options provided.  I suppose that if one receives a non-scanned regular PDF file, you will not need to take this step if you have permission to edit (assuming the drafter enabled a protection of some sort).

Still getting familiar with the new program, but feeling more confident with it.