Highlight tool is not working in Acrobat Pro DC

[StewartWeb]

I recently installed the recent Adobe Pro DC updates. A simple yellow highlighting feature used over the years is now seemingly impossible. When clicking the highlighter, the text areas show myriad border lines and when I try to put the cursor in front of text I want to highlight, huge blocks of asymmetrical shapes are highlight in yellow instead of just the word or sentence I am wanting to highlight.

I am also finding other simple edit functions are not working properly.

Please advise.

Douglas Stewart

[Personal info removed by Mod: Email]

[JZybach]

I understand this is old, but my edit tool don't work. I am completely uptodate and just to check I created a test document and I can't highlight in that either. 

[LInda2225057713ir]

I have this same issue now.........   😞 

[Ted24617203axk2]

I quit Adobe for a few years, but have recently re-installed it. The hi-lighting feature works fine now. To iniate it; click the icon of a fountain pen near the left side of taskbar at the top of the screen. Then place your cursor at the start of hiliting to the end, and it should hilite all. If you left click on the hilited area, an popup appears with 3 options. Add note, change colour, and trash, are the options. Trash removes the hiliting, not the text.

[LInda2225057713ir]

My highlight tool does nothing, it worked fine for years, now it does nothing at all.  Used to be able to tell once you selected the tool, now it does absolutely nothing when I click on it. I've tried all the "fixes" folks are suggesting with no luck.  I guess I'll have to uninstall and reinstall the program.  😞 

[medartist]

I have this problem when a pdf is merely a scanned hardcopy document without the pdf attributes. You can convert it but the auto text may misspell unlegible type of the scan is poor or a copy of a copy leading to poor resolution. If your image quality of the text is good try converting it and you'll get your highlighter back. 

[Evan28801112egdu]

Edit>Search More Tools (Or just type in the search bar)>type"Recognize Text">Press blue "Recognize Text" button

[Michael28969066d0j7]

My highlight cursor is a circle.  It is impossible to highlight text.

[Beth24128142szns]

Hi Michael. Try this. Your pdf is quite probably an image (even though the extension is .pdf), rather than text. (this will happen with scanned hard copies of documents and other abnormal pdf saves.)

Save your open pdf as a "SAVE AS" pdf and give it any temporary name.. Open the newly saved pdf and now you should be able to highlight the text without a problem. This is the only solution that I have found that works. Has nothing to do with updates... and there is no need to "convert" the text...

Hopefully thids will work for you as it does fo me. : ) 

[Ted24617203axk2]

I have never experienced this problem. I would reboot your system as a first try. I have had the cursor highlight as a circle on occasion. It was when I was highlighting text within a table or a graph. I found that highlighting there produced a shaky line, but Adobe corrected it to be straight, at the end of the highlight. When returning to the body of the document, the icon reverted to a normal icon and I could highlight the rest of the PDF file. I hope this helps.

[Columbus_IN]

Before doing everthing Adobe suggested, you may be having the same issue I had.  After you select the higlight tool on the floating toolbar, look five icons down immediately below the "push pin" icon.  It will probably look like a "white circle" on a white bar, which is why it's not intuitive to see.  That white circle is where you can select the color of your highlight tool.  Change it to yellow or one of the other colors (anything but white), and your highlighter will "work" again.  It was probably "working" all along, but if it was a white highlighter on white paper, it was invisible.  Screenshot is below.  (BTW - Really, Adobe?  You apparently with the update set the default highlighter color to "white" when 99.9% of PDF page colors are white?!  And then, you suggest multiple reinstall/repair steps, etc., instead of knowing how your "updated" app works or doesn't work. Ugh!)  

[Taxman407]

I had the exact same problem and called in for customer service; 800.915-9428. The gist of it was to click to edit the pdf and run recognize text. The customer service agent also changed some security settings that might have interfered with the opening of the document. Mine was also color blocking way more than I wanted in a scanned document. The 'recognize text' fixed that even though the fax was of dubious quality. I am happy.

[david277021606ga4]

It is an amazing shame that Adobe--once and industry standard--is having problem what have not been fixed for more than three years.

[maria_8223]

I have the same problem... I tried all the fixes recommended in these type of forums. Why wont you Adobe fix your product instead?