How do I highlight text without creating a comment?

[teancum144]

I'm trying to highlight selected text of an existing document. However, when I do this, Acrobat DC Pro automatically creates a comment. I want to highlight text without creating a comment. How do I do this?

[Document Geek · Accepted solution]

You can‘t. Highlighting IS a comment. But you can flatten it. Document Geek: Flattenizer Script for Adobe PDFs

[Nicole5D73]

You don't need an external app. If what you want is to print or share a highlighted document, a better option for flattening is just to use the feature within Adobe, which LukeJenner3 mentions further below. 

He includes an image, and also writes: "There is an Acrobat solution, use this Preflight fixup, which will convert the highlighted text to normal page content. Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups."

Worked for me! 

[Anthony27030307v8j3]

This is not true - or at least it wasn't for me until today (11/09/2022). I have always been able to highlight selected text without a comment box also being embeded in it. Why has this changed and how can it be terminated?

[Anthony27030307v8j3]

This is not true - or at least it wasn't for me until today (11/09/2022). I have always been able to highlight selected text without a comment box also being embeded in it. Why has this changed and how can it be terminated?

[ZRMadob]

Agreed with Anthony, was always able to highlight text with ease and now it suddently doesnt work...

[ZRMadob]

Of course after an hour of searching, I find an answer 10 minutes after commenting:

In the new versions of Adobe, the default setting under security default to "enable Protected Mode at startup". go to Edit/Preferences/security and uncheck the box. then restart the program.

This worked for me!

[jane-e]

Hi,

Is there a reason that it’s not okay for the Highlighting to be a comment? It means that you can navigate from one comment to the next, and delete any that are wrong.

The Highlighter is a Commenting tool and all Commenting tools create Comments.

Anything you do with the Edit tool is not a comment, but highlighting is not an option with that tool.

~ Jane

[joshua83702a]

Yes, there most certainly is: electronic documents are used as paper analogues; users often highlight text without margin notes, etc., as the highlight is all that is desired. Instead, Adobe has apparently made that impossible. In fact, what we have now is a comment on the comment, which is irritating as we would prefer that sidebar comments only contain comments if populated with text, not empty to denote highlighting (except for users in the department of redundancy department, who love the feature).

Is there truly no way to just, simply, highlight?

[try67]

No, not really. The only way is to add the highlights as comments and then flatten the file, as was mentioned before.

Notice that this will also flatten all other comments you added to it, though.

[joshua83702a]

Pity. It seems to me that was once possible.

[try67]

Not that I'm aware of.

[Tom McClain]

Try this. Use the select tool to select text. Comment bar pops up, select highlight. Text is highlighted but no comment window is created. If you want one, click on the highlighted text and you can add a comment. This is what I did in preferences. 

[Lis7]

Tom_McClain for the win, thanks 🙂

[joanieg92796014]

This still leaves a comment box. If I was to highlight text by using this method and changing my edit preferences, I might not see the comment box, but if I send this file to others, they will see the comment boxes.

[Guest]

THANK YOU SO MUCH! THIS WORKED PERFECTLY FOR ME.  I checked all of the boxes you have checked in your picture example and unchecked all of the others.  Then I made the pop-up opacity 50 and highlighted.  I saw no comment boxes.  Finally!  My PDF's are usually saved to my desktop for me.  I occasionally send them as attachments in email, but it worked, and I'm grateful.  

Cassandra

[April23972298qqmd]

Hi Try,

I'm sure you've been told that one could most definitely simply highlight; my intent isn't to diminish your assistance to those to whom it is helpful...You are just flattly wrong here and I'm adding my voice of witness to others who asserted this in the past. I know simple highlighting existed as I--like many, many, many, many others in my profession used it for years and wish to do so for many more years as doing so is a researcher's vital tool for eliminating chaff. I also use it follow complex instructions. Comments waste time and diminish productivity when what one wishes is to simply highlight the relevant word, sentence, or paragraph. Loss of consistent availability of this vital tool is an ENORMOUS hindrance to my productivity. I've used help/hints from others that provide for its availability now and again, but because Adobe doesn't seem to have done ANYTHING to fix an obvious bug of many years that, again, has directly interfered with my productivity.  I'm glad for folks to step in when programmers aren't doing the job. I just wanted you to know this functionality was absolutely available ALL THE TIME, while its availability now for something vital to my profession is occasional and/or short-term at best. Thanks, April

[sameproblemwithhighlighteruser]

Less is more. I have same gripe. Before I subscribed to Adobe pro it was worthwhile to simply highlight text to merely note important parts. Now it is really annoying to creating a Comment even if not filled in. Adobe give us that option please. I suspect most subscribers would like a simple highlighter. Then there could also be a commenting highlighter.

[Tom McClain]

I found that if I use the selection to select text and THEN click on the
highlight symbol on the shortcut menu bar it highlights without a text box.

[joanieg92796014]

This didn't work for  me. It still shows the comment box.

[uh-mare-ah]

If you want, you can use the "Add checkmark" feature to denote any pop-up with comments, and then filter the comment list to only show the checkmarked items. A little clunky, but it works.

[Ashley5CD0]

I found what I think is a solution to this, when playing around with some of the solutions suggested by others. It works for me, at least.

I also am reading legal documents, trying to highlight them, and also trying to create margin comments. The problem was that in order for me to see my margin comments, I had to look at a lot of noise about highlighting "comments". In my version of Adobe, however, in the comment pane I have the option to click the filter button (that looks like a funnel) at the top of the pane, and then under "type" select "sticky note" and make sure "highlight" is not selected. This worked for me! I hope it works for others out there as well.

[defaultq4pgng9p1l0n]

@Ashley5CD0.  BRILLIANT and it only took one click and one try!  It works!!!!!!  Thanks for making somebody's day brighter --without all the empty highlights cluttering up the comment sidebar.  

[Lisa Beach22133990nwm3]

I tried this but the problem is that all the highlighting in the file is then removed as well. So while the highlight comments are gone, so is the actual highlighting in the file.

[j270499288mkl]

Yes Filter>Type>Sticky Note (aka comment) worked for me too.  Much simpler than using checkmarks.