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Anonymous

Answered

how the hell do you turn off "highlighting"? help function is utterly unhelpful!

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
August 3, 2012
17 replies
124873 views

how do you turn off highlighting so you can, for instance, copy text?

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Correct answer barbarag11653730

Are you ready for this? I looked for the answer everywhere and I JUST found it (I had to make a friggin Adobe account so I could post here, so I hope it's useful to someone at some point!)

Two quick things: first, I'm working on a Mac, so it might be different for you, if you're not. Second, I'm more or less computer illiterate, so bear with me!

In the bar at the top of the screen the you see Adobe Reader File Edit View Window Help

Click on View to get the drop down menu.

One of the options should say Show/Hide. Hover over that to see the menu that pokes out to the side.

From there hover over Toolbar Items. Hover over that to see another menu that pokes out to the right.

In that menu you should see Select & Zoom. Hover over it for the next side menu.

You will see the option Select Tool (it's next to the little symbol that looks like the mouse pointer).

Click that!!

Hopefully at the tool menu above your Adobe document, you will see the same little symbol pop up (for me it's between the page count and the zoom). It looks like the mouse pointer. Click that and the highlight and/or comment thing should go away.

Hope it works for ya'll!! Good luck!

Show previous replies

Chronarchs2

Participant

Like most applications, a toggle means off and on. Why is it necessary to move from one tool to another? That isn't necessary in, well, any other application I use. If I toggle an element on, it is on, if I toggle it off, it is off, I don't have to go from Bold, to Italics, to Underline, I can turn them on and off as needed. It is the way most programs work. After all, if having to hop from one tool to another was that intuitive, we wouldn't be having this discussion and most of us wouldn't have had the need to look up the answer to utilize what should have been a common element. Highlighting is a tool that most people will use regularly. A more simplistic way of operating is desired by most users.....but that's only years of IT Consulting talking... Obviously Adobe feels this is appropriate and the 184,000 sites that come up Google when you search for 'how to turn off highlighting in adobe' mean nothing.... Adding additional clicks to simply turn off the highlighter is obviously the preferred method...

try67

Community Expert

The fact there are a lot of Google results for something doesn't mean much. You'll get 184K results for just about anything you search in Google...

Anyway, the way the application works a tool always has to be selected. One could say that the Hand tool could be switched to by default, but I don't think that's more intuitive then how it works now.

If you want you can make a feature request here: Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Chronarchs2

Participant

Why not just make this a toggle? It is what we all expect....why increase the amount of clicks to simply turn off a tool? Click on...Click off....how hard can that be from a programming stand point, and honestly, it would make it far more user friendly.

I'm just saying....

try67

Community Expert

And what tool should be selected when you "click it off"?

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FS Planner

Participant

Holy cow! it did work. Comment is not where I would of looked but now I see the logic.

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nweissma

Known Participant

the simplest way that i know of is to click the HAND tool: How do I add the hand tool to the toolbar on Adobe Acrobat Reader DC ?

MikeScarb

Participant

Apparently, giving an object the capability to toggle on and off is beyond anyone's programming skills at Adobe. I used to think Steve Jobs was too critical of Adobe. Now I know he was right, God rest his soul.

T

ThomasElmore4

Participant

Click on another tool, either the hand or the arrow and it will automatically deselect the highlight tool. Another option is to select the highlight tool, right click, select Properties or CTRL+E, when the dialog box appears, uncheck the box labeled "keep tool selected". This will ensure that after you highlight the text, the tool will automatically return to a default setting.