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]

[sameproblemwithhighlighteruser]

I agree with your frustration. I finally called their technical help and got it to work. Highlighting should also not generate a separate comment. Highlighting is common enough. They make it so hard to do. Frustrating. On the other hand, there is nothing that appears to work as well as Adobe Acrobat Pro.

[Leonard5CD0]

It can't be that hard to fix the glitch which prevents highlighting and is driving your users crazy. Just fix the damn thing and put out an update rather than having the users do your work for you.

[Mama Shan]

I am experiencing the same with blobs of highlite and assymetrical shapes....what happened? This was working a few moths ago...I miss the highliter tool!

[Tim231182182cxv]

Hi,

It's 2022 and this problem is still happening. Yesterday, i could highlight pdf documents with yellow by clicking the highlight tool, selecting what I want with it, done. Highlighted. Today, doesnt work. I tried finding solutions online but only found people have this same issue... A pdf document is a pdf document, why cant Adboe fix this once and for all? Now I've spent 16 minutes trying to find what is not available - a solution. Giving up on Adobe. Sad. 

[Michelle24314305h4vd]

Make sure you are actually in an Adobe product, that your document did not open in Chrome. 

[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?

[kathryn_2959]

I am having this problem in Acrobat Pro. I'm using the cloud version. When I try to highlight, it selects a huge block on the page instead of specific words/text. I tried to Recognize text and use OCR, which tell me I already have text. I also checked for updates. How can I get this to work?  

[Amal.]

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Hi there,

Hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out.

Could you confirm if this issue is occurring with a specific PDF file or with all PDFs? Please try opening a different PDF file and check if the problem persists. This will help us determine whether the issue is file-specific or a broader application concern.

Additionally, ensure that your Acrobat application is updated to the latest version 25.01.20428. You can check for updates by navigating to Help > Check for Updates. After updating, please restart your computer and see if the issue persists.

Since you mentioned that you've already tried using Recognize Text (OCR) but are still facing the issue, it indicates that text is already present but not functioning as expected. To investigate further, please share the affected PDF file with us. This will allow us to test it on our end and provide more precise troubleshooting steps.