How to continuously highlight or underline text in a pdf on Adobe Acrobat?

[linseyf95755091]

I am trying to highlight and underline text on a pdf opened in Acrobat, but the highlight tool only works on each individual word, so when I try to highlight an entire sentence or paragraph, each individual word is highlighted with blank spaces in between. It is annoying and jarring to read an entire paragraph like that. On some documents I can automatically highlight continuously but on others it is broken up. How can I adjust the highlight/underline tools so the whole sentence or paragraph is highlighted continuously without spaces in between?

What I don't want:

What I do want:

[Bernd Alheit]

How did you create the file?

[matthewl85098861]

I have the same problem.  I am reading a technical article that has full justification and the highlighting has gaps between words when they are spaced too far apart because of the full justificaiton.

Adobe, please provide a solution for continuously highlighting across words, or at least answer@ [PERSONAL INFORMATION REMOVED PER POLICY - THIS IS AN OPEN FORUM, NOT ADOBE SUPPORT, PLEASE DO NOT POST PERSONAL INFORMATION].

Thank you.

[Amal.]

Hi Matthewl

Hope you are doing well and sorry for the toruble. As described the highlight is non continuous.

Would you mind sharing the workflow/steps you did to create the PDF file?

Please try to create the PDF from the File menu > Create  in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC application and check if that helps.

Let us know if you experience any trouble and need more help.

Regards

Amal

[matthewl85098861]

Hi Amal,

Thank you for your assistance.  I did not "create" the PDF in that it is a PDF of a technical article I downloaded and I am highlighting sections while reading it.  The article uses full justification, which increases the spacing between some words and I would like the highlighting to continue between those the words.

See the attached images, where one images shows a gap between the highlighted words "slot-based" and "transmission", but the other image shows no gap between the selected words.  I.e., I selected both words, which showed they were continuously selected, but when I chose to highlight the selection, the highlighting is no longer continuous.  This appears to be a bug in Acrobat because if they can be selected continuously, they should also be highlighted continously.  Please let me know how to fix it.

Best regards,

Matt

[Amal.]

Hi Matt,

We are sorry to hear that and thank you for sharing the information. Would you mind sharing the PDF file with us so that we can check it at our end. For information about sharing the PDF please check the help page: https://helpx.adobe.com/document-cloud/help/sharing-pdfs.html

Regards

Amal

[matthewl85098861]

Hi Amal,

Thank you for your comments.  I tried sharing the PDF using your link, but got a message stating "Storage limit already reached on Document Cloud. Please delete files and try again."  I have not directly used the Document Cloud, so am unsure why there are any documents affecting a "storage limit."  Please note that I used Adobe Acrobat Standard, not DC.

That aside, it seems I am able to share the document with this reply, have attached it accordingly, and look forward to your comments.

Best regards,

Matt

[Amal.]

Hi Matt

Sorry for the delay in response. I have checke the PDF file you have dhared and found that it is created using a non Adobe application. Upon tryinto reproduce the issue i was able to highlight the PDF properly.

Please try to reset the Acrobat preferences to default as described in the help page https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/how-to-reset-acrobat-preference-settings-to-default/td-p/4792... and check if that helps

Also make sure you have the latest version installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Regards

Amal

[matthewl85098861]

Hi Amal,

Thank you for your helpful advice.  I checked for updates and am up to date, so we are good there.  Also, I am reluctant to reset my preferences in fear of changing preferences that I do not want changed.  Thus, I will just live with the breaks between words when highlighting.

Best regards,

Matt

[JustWorkAlready]

Although this is not ideal, I found that these steps solved the problem for me:

1. Open the PDF in Acrobat
2. Print to PDF using Adobe PDF printer or Microsoft Print to PDF 
3. Open the new pdf document
4. Highlights are continuous

[Janet98BC]

I have the same problem with underlining so I tried your suggestion to print to PDF with both Adobe PDF printer and Microsoft Print to PDF.  Unfortunately, underlining was still not continuous in the new pdf documents.  So the work around does not work for underlining.  In case anyone wants to know.

[nagaguard · Accepted solution]

I had the same problem of broken word-by-word highlights. I was able to achieve the contiguous highlight be redoing the optical character recognition (OCR) in the PDF. First, I ran the tool "Remove Hidden Information" to render the words unsearchable. Then, I ran the tool "Recognize Text".  Optionally, I also like to use the setting "Searchable Image (Exact)" when recognizing text. After performing these two steps, contiguous highlighting was achieved.

[ty@orh]

This did not work for my document.  This is so frustrating.  Adobe should fix this issue.  It has been a problem for awhile.

[Amal.]

Hi there

Have you tried the steps shared in the correct answer? Please give them a try and see if that works.

Let us know if you experience any trouble and need more help.

~Amal