Highlight tool is inconsistent

[erich84629912]

I have a customer (a Windows 10 64bit user) who uses Adobe Acrobat XI Professional to highlight relevant content in pdf documents. She finds that when she highlights some documents, instead of selecting the text by line the highlighting the tool will draw an oval shape over a section of the document instead.

I have tested this application on two other machines with different OSes and achieved exactly the same result using the same problematic documents. When some documents in her store are highlighted, they will select text by line, but others will be highlighted by oval sections.

I'm now asking the following questions in this forum because you are the experts who created the standard in the first place: Are these problems caused by the fact that some of the documents in question started their life as scanned images instead of as PDF-formatted documents? Or is there something else at play here? My customer believes that others are able to do the same thing with the same document. I'm trying to be polite and avoid making "prove" her claim by going to the experts first! I hope you will answer these questions because this particular user is a practicing attorney for whom information from trusted validated sources is all that will be accepted!

[try67]

If the file contains "real" text (ie, not a scanned image, but actual, selectable text) then the application will default to the Text Highlighting mode (you can change it to the Draw Mode by holding down Ctrl). If the file doesn't contain such text then only the Draw Mode will be available, as there's no real text that can be highlighted.

[jaimeesv]

I am having the same issue - after a reinstall - it is a document which I have managed to successfully and normally highlight in the past.

[Adorobat]

Hi Jaimees,

Sorry for the delay in response.

Would it be possible if you can share the problematic pdf file with us? You may refer to the steps given in the following link on:

How to share a file using Adobe Document Cloud

Also, let us know Acrobat dot version and the operating system installed on the machine. To check the version in Acrobat: Identify the product and its version for Acrobat and Reader DC

Thanks,

Shivam

[johnnyc58451640]

I'm having the same issues randomly several times over the last twelve months.This attached document is from an online pdf that I printed to pdf using the adobe printer function. First page highlighted fine. Second page had blobs. 

I went back and directly downloaded the same pdf to my computer, and the highlighter worked fine in that scenario.

Here's my share link: Shared Files - Acrobat.com

Version : Adobe Acrobat Standard DC Version 2015.006.30418

[jane-e]

erich84629912  wrote

Are these problems caused by the fact that some of the documents in question started their life as scanned images instead of as PDF-formatted documents?

Yes, it is a result of bad OCR. See this thread:

Highlight tool skips characters