Text markup tool missing again

Question

Did Adobe take away the only markup tool that matters...again?

On a production machine that I accidentally let update, I've got a bunch of text markup tools:

(screenshot from Acrobat Pro DC)

But one glaring omission:

(screenshot from my main machine running Acrobat XI and no other CC updates past 11.3 because of that god-awful UI update)

This T-with-a-star tool is the text markup tool that rolls the separate insert, replace, and delete all into one efficient tool. Why do the others even exist? Why would anybody switch among three tools when there is one that does it all? This tool was fine for years at least as far back as Acrobat 8 when my company started moving to a digital workflow. It was also fine in Acrobat 9, tho there seemed little reason to upgrade from 8. It was mysteriously removed from Acrobat X, so I put up a stink and downgraded all my editors back to 9. When XI came out, I decided that was OK for my own use, but most of my editors still prefer to use Acrobat 9 so I don't argue. Newer users however have found that they cannot get Acrobat 9 to install on newer OSes and are forced to use Acrobat DC. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the commenting tools are now available in the free Acrobat Reader DC, so that's certainly a bonus! But where is that one tool that we absolutely need? I swear I remember seeing that full markup tool when I started recommending users to upgrade, but now I just sat down at a machine with Acrobat DC and all I see are those 3 limited tools.

Was this master tool removed from newer Acrobat DC versions by some update? Is it hiding somewhere? Or am I remembering wrong and it was it never actually there in Acrobat DC? I've checked both the full version and the Reader version and all I see are those annoying, cumbersome, separate markup tools.

donayer · Accepted Answer

For anybody else looking for this tool, it DOES exist, it's just not actually a commenting tool any more. Instead of using all the individual text markup tools for your text markup, just use the selection tool (yes, the plain ol' arrow) to make your markups.

If you select text and hit delete, it will be marked for deletion.

If you select text and start typing, it will be marked as replacement.

If you just click a spot and start typing, it will be marked as an insert at that spot.

Besides just being generally unclear, there are a couple other confusing bits:

Even though the selection tool is not part of the commenting tools, you can't use if for commenting until you open the Commenting tools panel, so you still have to wait those annoying 4 seconds of hang that never existed in previous versions.
You still can't double-click to select a word for a replace comment. You must click and drag, otherwise the word will just be marked for deletion. This bug has been around for a while. Oddly, you can triple-click to to select a line and for replacement, which I think is a new twist on the bug.

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