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Answered

How do I highlight text without creating a comment?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
February 20, 2019
8 replies
35040 views

I'm trying to highlight selected text of an existing document. However, when I do this, Acrobat DC Pro automatically creates a comment. I want to highlight text without creating a comment. How do I do this?

Correct answer Document Geek

You can‘t. Highlighting IS a comment. But you can flatten it. Document Geek: Flattenizer Script for Adobe PDFs

A

Aisha28677178twd1

Participant

to avoid comment boxes while highlighting, is to open the document after all the highlighting is done in microsoft edge and saving it again gets rid of the comment box.

D

DrBazza

Participant

The issue is that if you highlight and create a comment you cannot then highlight part of that text to the clipboard. DAFT! WHY?

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

There is an Acrobat solution, use this Preflight fixup, which will convert the highlighted text to normal page content. Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups.

K

Kesya0D45

Participant

I also have that same complaint.
I just want to highlight with color, part of the text without creating comments and being able to upload this file to Drive for example, without comment boxes appearing on the side.
It is very irritating that no viewer and pdf editor does this.

try67

Community Expert

If you change the application's preferences (Edit - Prefs. - Commenting) to disable create new pop-ups aligned with the edge of the document and to copy the selected text into the highlight it will work as you've described. You can also flatten the file after highlighting it to get rid of all the comment pop-ups once and for all.

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uri5C70

Participant

THIS WORKS - do as Kesya0D45 says!

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Ashley5CD0

Participant

I found what I think is a solution to this, when playing around with some of the solutions suggested by others. It works for me, at least.

I also am reading legal documents, trying to highlight them, and also trying to create margin comments. The problem was that in order for me to see my margin comments, I had to look at a lot of noise about highlighting "comments". In my version of Adobe, however, in the comment pane I have the option to click the filter button (that looks like a funnel) at the top of the pane, and then under "type" select "sticky note" and make sure "highlight" is not selected. This worked for me! I hope it works for others out there as well.

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defaultq4pgng9p1l0n

Participant

@Ashley5CD0. BRILLIANT and it only took one click and one try! It works!!!!!! Thanks for making somebody's day brighter --without all the empty highlights cluttering up the comment sidebar.

S

sameproblemwithhighlighteruser

Participating Frequently

Less is more. I have same gripe. Before I subscribed to Adobe pro it was worthwhile to simply highlight text to merely note important parts. Now it is really annoying to creating a Comment even if not filled in. Adobe give us that option please. I suspect most subscribers would like a simple highlighter. Then there could also be a commenting highlighter.

Tom McClain

Participant

I found that if I use the selection to select text and THEN click on the
highlight symbol on the shortcut menu bar it highlights without a text box.

J

Joanie G

Participant

This didn't work for me. It still shows the comment box.

jane-e

Community Expert

Hi,

Is there a reason that it’s not okay for the Highlighting to be a comment? It means that you can navigate from one comment to the next, and delete any that are wrong.

The Highlighter is a Commenting tool and all Commenting tools create Comments.

Anything you do with the Edit tool is not a comment, but highlighting is not an option with that tool.

~ Jane

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joshua83702a

Participant

Yes, there most certainly is: electronic documents are used as paper analogues; users often highlight text without margin notes, etc., as the highlight is all that is desired. Instead, Adobe has apparently made that impossible. In fact, what we have now is a comment on the comment, which is irritating as we would prefer that sidebar comments only contain comments if populated with text, not empty to denote highlighting (except for users in the department of redundancy department, who love the feature).

Is there truly no way to just, simply, highlight?

try67

Community Expert

No, not really. The only way is to add the highlights as comments and then flatten the file, as was mentioned before.

Notice that this will also flatten all other comments you added to it, though.

Document Geek

Correct answer

Community Expert

You can‘t. Highlighting IS a comment. But you can flatten it. Document Geek: Flattenizer Script for Adobe PDFs

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Nicole5D73

Participant

You don't need an external app. If what you want is to print or share a highlighted document, a better option for flattening is just to use the feature within Adobe, which LukeJenner3 mentions further below.

He includes an image, and also writes: "There is an Acrobat solution, use this Preflight fixup, which will convert the highlighted text to normal page content. Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups."

Worked for me!

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