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willm26591030
Participant
June 29, 2015
Answered

Cannot highlight text in a PDF.

  • June 29, 2015
  • 17 replies
  • 382242 views

Too hard??  I have been using Adobe products for 20 years and never had a single problem highlighting a pdf.  Today I find I can't highlight a PDF and I really need to.  I have spent the entire day, its now 3:30pm, trolling the internet trying to find out how to highlight and Adobe PDF document.  Epic fail Adobe.

Correct answer OℓMarcelo

The same happens to Adobe Acrobat Reader DC desktop version and I use a workaround:

• Click on Comment icon to enable the tools.

• Click on Draw Rectangle tool,

• Click on Change Color tool, choose the color and set opacity to about 40%,

• Click on Change Line Thickness tool and set to 0 pt,

• Draw a rectangle around the text you want to highlight.

If you are not satisfied with the color and opacity then right click the rectangle, click Properties and change its appearance.

This will also highlight over the character itself and the effect is not as good as the real Highlight.

17 replies

Participant
June 9, 2025

You need to select the color of your highlight. Adobe changed their color pallet with the most recent update; unfortunalty, I beleive they made the default color transparent. When you click on the highlight market and when you move across the desired area/text to highlight if you see a blue outline it means you need to select a color. Note the O in the sidebar just under the thumb tack. Click on it and select your desired color. Once you have done this, thereafter each time you attempt to highlight the window / box of color options will open up next to where you're highlighting.  Hope this was helpful. 

Participant
July 19, 2024

It's just unclear to me why we now have to use a workaround for something that we've been doing for years. When I'm balancing my checkbook, I highlight each item on the statement as I match it to my checkbook. In the past, I've always been able to just select the amount and highlight it. NOW, it takes more steps plus it will only allow me to do it on the first page of the document. It doesn't make sense to update software and actually add more clicks limit what the user can do. Pretty much the opposite of good UX.

S_S
Community Manager
Community Manager
July 24, 2024

Hi @Kathy3870966209ph,

 

Hope you are doing well. Sorry for the trouble.

 

What you mention, shouldn't be happening. When you long press to select a text, you should get a dropdown (Android) or side-menubar (iOS) which has the option to highlight, underline or comment. 

 

Is this not something you see when you try to? Would you mind giving this a try and letting us know if that works?

If it doesn't, please feel free to share a screen recording video of the incident and we can get it checked.

 

-Souvik

Participant
July 24, 2024
Using a PC, not a phone.

Tested previously saved documents and it worked fine, so I deleted the
document and re-downloaded it. That seemed to solve the problem.
Participant
February 18, 2024

In my case, I had to chance the opacity of the highlight, which was set to 0%.

Participant
December 28, 2023

The solution is to print to pdf from the document you are trying to highlight.  The 'print' action changes the format to recognizable text!  Now you can highlight!

Known Participant
November 24, 2023

Here's my solution: open PDFs in Microsoft Word - a program where highlighting is simple, and works the way it's supposed to. I tried for an hour to make it work in Acrobat, and couldn't get it to. Adobe, Acrobat is janky and the tool process is opaque and near unusable. Look at Word, learn, and fix.

S_S
Community Manager
Community Manager
November 25, 2023

Hi @PaulVin,

 

Sorry for the experience. 

 

Anything specific that you would like to share with us to investigate? Like, is the issue related to a speicifc file, do you see any error messages, or a screen recording of the entire event happening for better understanding.

 

Look forward to hearing from you.

 

-Souvik

Participant
February 16, 2023

Encountered the same issue -- unable to highlight text in pdf docs that had no security protections -- had always previously been able to perform this simple function which suddenly became disabled. The suggestions posted here did not work. After some trial and error, the following change seems to have remedied the problem for me and once again enabled the ability to highlight pdf text (hope this helps):

1) Click account - preferences (upper right circle/pie chart next to notifications bell icon);

 

2) Under Preferences -- Categories -- click "General" 

3) Under General -- Basic Tools -- check the box next to "Make Hand too select text & images"

For some reason the box was unchecked -- once I checked it and clicked okay highlighting was once again enabled

 

Participant
April 27, 2023

I had the issue of not being able to hightlight when I did saved my document as "print to pdf". this is what I did:

  • Open the "Start" menu and in the search tab and type: Turn Windows features on or off.
  •  uncheck the feature of "Microsoft Print to PDF".
  • check the feature of "Microsoft Print to PDF" back on

and that worked for me and I can do highlight now.

good luck.

christianchase
Participant
July 27, 2022

This is a version problem. The solution is to Save As and select the file format: "PDF/X" and you will be in highlighting heaven...

Furthermore, this will turn on highlighting in the right-click context sensative menu, and you can set properties to default to a particular highlight color. To take highlighting off, select "White..."

 

kdk_1122
Participant
January 27, 2022

I'd been having the same problem on Android... But somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of my mind I remembered being able to do ALL kinds of editing including highlighting at some point.

 

Having had weird, non-sensical Acrobat UX issues in the past, I left cloud and went, via Files, to "On This Device" and tried again.

 

Lo & Behold, that was the fix! Again, totally odd UI. 

 

My 2 BIGGEST pet peeves however are,

 

1. Being unable to rename a file from inside the document! Totally crazy-making.

 

2. No batch uploading of device pdfs to the cloud UNLESS they are combined, which really isn't batch uploading at all. 

Participant
June 3, 2022

I had this same problem, but rather than corrupt the integrity of the document, I opened it in edge and was able to highlight the document the way I liked. from File manager, right-clicked the file, open with edge... done

Participant
October 2, 2023

This worked for me, also the fact that recently wheel scrolling went awry in adobe and I had to use the hand tool to wheel option is another downer. I might just have to change pdfs to always open in Edge, even though I;m not an Edge fan, but I am fast becoming not an adobe fan. Someone is fiddling with the software somehwere and it's deterimental to usability

Participant
September 16, 2021

O

Participant
March 17, 2021

I've had this problem recently.   I've always been able to look up a federal solicitation document (as part of my job) online and print to PDF, then highlight the important parts.  Lately, when I've been printing to Adobe PDF, I've been unable to highlight text in the resulting document.  It just highlights an circular area, not at all related to the text.  I've even tried running the OCR to recognize text, but it doesn't work.  It's very frustrating. 

 

I finally discovered a solutuion.  When I right click and select Print, I see the options of "Adobe PDF" and "Save As PDF".  If I select print to "Adobe PDF", I am faced with the problem described.  But if I select "Save As PDF", I am able to highlight the text in the saved document.  I am not sure if this "Save As PDF" option uses a Kami PDF extension that I have installed on my browser (MS Edge).  Perhaps it does.  But in short, the way to get around the problem is to not use the "Adobe PDF" option.  Given that I am using a paid license for Adobe Acrobat, this is a problem that should be addressed.

annes92561023
Participant
June 8, 2021

Thank you !!!   I don't know why they made this so difficult.  One of the reason's I used to like Adobe was for it's highlighting capability.  Now it's extra work everytime I try to do it.