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T
TS2021
Participant
December 6, 2021
Question

Extract highlighted text from Ipad

  • December 6, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 2846 views

Hello, I got an iPad because I thought it would be a good way to read and takes notes on PDFs. On the computer, you can highlight text and set a preference so that the highlighted text can be copied over to the comments. However there is no such preference on the iPad app. When I try to view comments from a PDF that I highlighted using my iPad on my computer; it just says "highlighted text" without the actual text there  and the exported comment summaries all turn out blank. The highlight is still visable. Is there a way to use my iPad to highlight and have the highlighted text copied over to the comments? I aim using the adobe reader app and Adobe acrobat on a MacBook.

2 replies

N
nicl96337772
Participant
June 6, 2025

Hi - I'm also looking for this feature and not finding it in the iPad app. This post is over 3 years old.

S_S
Community Manager
S_SCommunity Manager
Community Manager
June 7, 2025

Hi @nicl96337772,

 

Hope you are doing well. Thanks for writing in!

 

The feature is still in the pipeline for a future release.

 

If you have already posted about it from the above link, please share the Uservoice post link here so that other users can leave an upvote on the feature request.

The more the number of upvotes, the faster the chances of the feature coming live.


Regards,
Souvik.

Harsh Vardhan Pareek
Community Manager
Harsh Vardhan PareekCommunity Manager
Community Manager
December 7, 2021

Hi @TS2021,

 

Hope you are doing well.

As mentioned that you are not able to see the highlighted text on the iPad. Would you mind sharing a few details to understand the issue better?

1. If possible, could you attach the file or some screenshots which show the issue clearly.

2. Is it happening with all PDF or with a particular?

3. Application version?

4. iOS version?

 

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

 

Thanks,

Harsh

    N
    N24050986eozn
    Participant
    April 14, 2022

    Hi, I'm so glad to find this thread, because I am having the same problem. Attached is a pdf with highlights in 2 colors. The yellow highlights were made on my Macbook, and you can see that the highlighted text appears in the note.

    The green highlights were made in Acrobat Reader on a 2022 12.9" iPad Pro. You will see that as the initial poster described, they just say "highlighted text."

     

    Two additional factoids that might be relevant:

    1) I stopped reading pdfs on an iPad for about 2 years. Back then, Acrobat Reader was the only tablet pdf reader that did capture the text in a highlight. I tried sevearl other pdf readers but always came back to AR because of this feature. But I got a new iPad recently and now that feature seems lost in the current version of AR.

     

    2) In Zotero, using the Zotfile extension, I can "Send to tablet", which copies the pdf to a Dropbox directory that I see on the iPad. I mark up the document and when I "Get from tablet", Zotfile extracts the annotations into a text file. It can see the highlighted text even though Reader doesn't!

     

    Thanks in advance--I hope you can help solve this.

    --Nathaniel

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