How Do You Highlight a PDF Document (Acrobat Pro)

Hello @Janet31982943qtib

I hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out. We're sorry for the trouble you had.

Could you please share more details about the issue?

1. Were you using Draw > Rectangle as a comment/markup tool, or were you using Edit PDF tools?

2. When the colour controls disappeared, was the rectangle still selected?

If you are highlighting actual text:
You do not need the Drawing tool and rectangles at all. Use the dedicated Highlight text tool (the marker icon in the Comment / Quick actions toolbar): pick it, then drag across the text you want, and it highlights it, and you can keep dragging over section after section without reselecting anything. To set the colour once so every highlight uses it: make one highlight, right-click it, choose Properties, pick your colour and opacity, and tick "Make Properties Default" at the bottom. From then on every highlight comes out in that colour automatically.

Please note that this works on selectable text. If your document is a scan and you cannot select the text, run Scan & OCR > Recognise Text first; otherwise, the highlighter misbehaves.

If you actually want a coloured box over an area (not text):
Then the Rectangle drawing markup you are using is the right tool, and here is why the colour bar keeps disappearing and how to stop it:

That pop-up "change colour" bar is the Properties toolbar, and it is tied to whatever is selected, so it comes and goes as you draw. Instead of closing and reopening the Drawing tool, just select the shape and press Ctrl+E (Cmd+E on Mac) to bring it back. Right-clicking the shape and choosing Properties, or double-clicking it, also works.

Set your fill colour and opacity on one rectangle the way you want, then right-click it and choose "Make Current Properties Default." Every new rectangle after that inherits the same colour and opacity automatically, so you don't use the colour tool again.

To draw several boxes without re-picking the tool each time, turn on the keep-tool-selected pin (in the current UI it is labelled "Use the same tool until it's unselected"; in older versions it is the "Keep Tool Selected" thumbtack icon).

You can also refer to these articles and try the suggestions:

https://adobe.ly/4yac1WZ

https://adobe.ly/4ydXOsb

https://adobe.ly/45XqGsP

I hope this helps, and let us know how it goes. Please reach out if you experience any issues or need any further assistance.

Regards,

Anand Sri.