I have been making PDF's for my company for over 20 years. I convert Excel Reports to PDF's daily. My Excel report can be 100's of pages long and when I have data in the report that is considered bad or near bad the cell is colored red or yellow respectively to highlight that data. Converting to PDF has always been flawless and all colors transferred properly..
Now I convert and my Acrobat does not show the color yellow. Still the report is sent to others and read in Acrobat or Reader and the yellow appears as it should.
I also noted I can not highlight anymore.
I checked for updates and found I have the lates version. I did a Repair also.
What's up? How can I correct this issue of not seeing Yellow or versions of yellow?
The color may be missing because of an accessibility setting. If that's the case, go into Acrobat's preferences, then select the "Accessibility" category. Is the "Replace Document Colors" checkbox selected? If so, uncheck it. If it was checked, chances are that your yellow will be back.
Sorry, I see you gave the version in your original title. 11.0.23 is the final update to Acrobat XI but it has been discontinued for many years. So getting up to date MIGHT help.
Did I understand correctly that the SAME PDF FILE sent to other people works ok for them?
Also, what happens when you try to highlight, exactly?
Yes others receive the PDF correctly showing the yellow highlighted text box.
I try to highlight other PDF's (one's that could be highlighted in past) and color does not show. But when clicked on it showed boundary of what would be highlighted.
I apply yellow, red and other colors to my Excel spreadsheet 2 ways:
As a direct fill for a cell found using Format Cells on the home tab of the menu bar.
As a condition format. If the cell number meets a certain criteria the cell will fill with color, yellow or some other color.
Up until last week I would print in Excel to PDF and have no issues. The PDF was opened in my Acrobat and all formatting and colors appeared. Now Yellow does not appear using my Acrobat. All other formatting and colors appear.
When I mail the PDF to my phone or other individuals with Adobe Reader. They see all colors even Yellow.
Also I noticed previous PDF's given to me by clients that had paragraphs highlighted and opened in my Acrobat, the Highlighting was not visible no mater what color. But you can still click on highlighting boundary and delete same or open the "pop up note".
The color may be missing because of an accessibility setting. If that's the case, go into Acrobat's preferences, then select the "Accessibility" category. Is the "Replace Document Colors" checkbox selected? If so, uncheck it. If it was checked, chances are that your yellow will be back.
Great solution. As well as yellow missing from documents I noticed that "white" was missing when I tried typing (for example, typing the name of a river in white on a black background). Your solution also fixed that problem! Many thanks.
Yes I can not highlight any PDF. Even past or old pdf's that were once highlighted. However, you can click on text that should be highlighted and see boundary of text that should be highlighted.
I may have been assuming something. Is there a yellow colour in the Excel spreadsheet (which you should see in the PDF)? Or does the yellow colour come only from your highlighting?
Yes from Excel conversion to PDF and yes when I want to highlight an existing PDF. Both not showing in my Acrobat on my computer but on other individuals computers or cell phones.
Hello... I've noticed that sometimes it depends on what kind of PDF document I'm using whether I can highlight; for example, if you convert a Word document to a PDF then you should be able to highlight what you want/need. However, if the PDF file is an image (e.g., scanned) then I'm unable to highlight the text. My suggestion is to experiment a bit to see what you can do with highlighting - first try with something converted from Word just to see if you have any highlighting.
Hmmmm, well it was worth a shot. Do you have a friend who has Acrobat working as you want (highlighting) to whom you could send the Word document to see if your friend's Acrobat will highlight? Here I'm trying to determine if the problem is with Acrobat given the fixes you have already applied or the document you are working with - as mentioned, for me, sometimes I can't highlight but most often I can which I think is because of the nature of the docment.
Today I'm working with a PDF slide deck on which I can't highlight important passages. My workaround is to convert this document to Word and then use Word's highlighting feature for what I want and then convert back to a PDF which retains the highlighting. Sure, it requires slightly more work but I end up with what I want - this is just a thought and/or alternate approach. Hopefully this helps...
I have tried following your instructions and still cannot get the yellow to work. Initially the box under accessibility was not checked and I couldn't get the yeloow. I clicked which allowed the ability to custom color box so I added document text to yellow, I than unclicked the repalcement box and still cant get the yellow highlighter to work?
I am using Acrobat XI (bought and paid for, sufficient all these years for my needs) and while I do not recall ever telling the program to "Replace Document Colours", this command turned out to be selected, so I unchecked it and my beautiful yellow highlights are back! Yea for Karl, still helping Adobe users since his helpful post in 2019
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