Force text-only selection, i.e. disable box-selection?

Question

Acrobat seems to be massively finicky about the way you move the mouse when trying to select text. Specifically, it seems as though you have to not only initially click precisely within the character-width-and-height zone of a stripe of text, but also have to move the mouse in a perfect horizontal line in order to engage the text-selection mode.

Thus I am having a problem selecting text, which is the only thing I ever select in a PDF file, because Acrobat keeps interpreting it as a box I am trying to draw, and this function is incapable of selecting text.

Is there any way to disable the box-drawing selection mode? I do not use it, ever, and it is getting in the way of basic functionality for my use of Acrobat.

ls_rbls · Accepted Answer

You're welcome. Happy to help.

Just yesterday I posted another thread for a user that wanted to make the Hand tool the default selection tool.

See here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/make-hand-default-cursor/m-p/10847112#M235530

I think you can try this in combination with opening your documents in Read Mode.

There's more settings that may be of your interest in the following guidance:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/viewing-pdfs-viewing-preferences.html

To formally address a suspected bug in Adobe Acrobat/Reader, or to voice up a feature request use the following link and complete the wish form :

https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

ls_rbls · Answer

Hi,

Please identify which selection tool are you using: the hand tool or the Select Tool ( the arrow).

The behavior you're describing seems to happen you are working on a PDF document using the Prepare Form tool.

Everytime you click on any area that is not an object field it will switch to Edit Text & Images automatically.

To avoid that, and to make sure that selecting and copying text from a PDF document is all you need Go to Edit--->>> Preferences --->>> General.

In the Basic Tools section un-tic the box that says "Make Select Tool select images before text"

Also, identify that you're not using Edit PDF tool

or Prepare Form tools as you work with your PDFs and navigate through the pages that you're selecting text from.

Another suggestion you may want to try is to open the Page Thumbnail view pane (left margin of your workspace). Select all thumbnailed pages, right-click on the selction, select Page Properties, and the tick the radio button that says " Use Document Structure".

Another suggestion is to just hover the Selection Tool arrow pointer to the first word of the line of text you intend to select, and instead of keeping the button pressed and moving the mouse pointer just double-click the left button to select the whole word or triple-click to select the entire sentence in that line.

Four rapid clicks will select an entire paragraph or all text in the current working page.

It is faster to work with a combination of mouse gestures and keyboard short cuts for large documents with a lot of text.

If I just want to select and entire line without fighting the mouse point-and-click accuracy of the mouse device, for example, I triple-click to select the entire line of text of interest.

And if I need to select additional lines below or above that line of text, then I press the Shift key+ the up or down, left or right arrow keys to select more carefully over the sapeces or characters I want my selecrion to end, OR, tap the arrow key character by character for a.more precise selection of where I wish to end that selection of text.

I also use the Tab key to move accross my field objects, and use shift+tab to move back accross the field objects.

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