Issue with irritating highlighting boxes.

[impressive_member8897]

Greetings all,

I will preface this with the satatement that I do not find Adobe to be most intuiutive or user friendly program and as such likely am missing something simple.

Basically the problem is that every time I highlight text, if I click the highlighted text to either highlight more or less, or any reason at all; an irritating blue outlined box surrounds EVERYTHING on that line, and it also makes it so I cannot use my cursor within that box.  

How do I make it so Adobe stops sticking a......irritating box around everything?

This is text I manually highlighted.

This is immediately what happens when I click anywhere in  the highlighted text.

No matter what I do I cannot click to get my cursor to function inside that blue box.  I DEARLY wish to never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever see this box again.

Regards,

[try67]

A highlight is a comment. When you select a comment there's an indicator that shows you that selection through a box around it. There's no way around it. If what you're trying to do is copy the text you've highlighted you will need to be a bit creative. You can start the selection a bit before the text and drag the mouse over it, or you could copy the text from the comment's contents (if you enabled the option to copy the selected text into it), or you could flatten the file, converting the highlight from a comment to static page contents, and then you'll be able to select the text normally.

[impressive_member8897]

Ok, so I know you think that made sense but you need to remember that I avoid using Adobe unless I ABSOLUTELY must due to it being so utterly user unfriendly, because it didn't make sense and Adobe keeps adding in changes which are unintuitive, unhelpful, unwanted, and unexplained.

Firstly, I am not having anything to do with a comment; I am highlighting pre-existing text on the document.

Second, I am indeed trying to copy text, but I am trying to copy PART of the highlighted text.  Basically I am going through data in which the relevant information I will use is highlighted, but I will use different bits in different spots, some of which is quite precise and manually keying would leave it prone to error.  So I want to be able to click and drag my cursor across the data that I specifically want at that moment to then copy and paste, just like you can with every other program.

Third, I don't want to be copying additional data by starting early and then having to back track delete characters.  This adds additional time and the probability of errors considering the volume of data I sort through.

Fourth, I only want to copy parts of the highlighted data at a time, not the whole thing.  And why on earth would it need to be even a thought that I would have to enable the optino to copy?  Either Ctrl+C or right click and copy, like every other program.

Fifth, I legitimately have no idea what you mean by flatten.

Six, I don't know what you mean by a static page.

Seventh, why would I need to convert anything to copy and paste normally?  That's just adding an exorbitant length of time and process for should be 'click' 'drag' 'copy' 'paste'. 

I just want the box to go away so I can access my data, like I have always been able to do before.  There must be a way to turn off this truly and egregiously unhelpful dis-function.

Why is it so difficult to perform a function that we have been doing on hundreds of programs over decades?

It is like I said at the beginning, Adobe is so immensely un user friendly.  It's worse than Mac.

[try67]

Simplest solution for you is this:

Open the Comments panel. Click the Filter Icon. Enable "Hide all comments".

Copy the texts you want to copy.

Go back to the same spot and disable hiding the comments.

Done.

[impressive_member8897]

Good morning,

So I found the comment panel and panicked when I turned of all comments and saw all my highlighting disappear, but was glad when they reappeared when I turned it back on.

Unfortunately hiding comments isn't feasible.  I have to work with many highlighted fields of text and having to continually turn a setting on and off is just not practical, and slows down the work too much.  If it still showed the highlighted text when I turned off the comments that would be ok, because at least then I can see what I need to enter next without having to read through all the text again to se the next bit.

Sorry try67 but if that is the simplest solution so I can select text that has been highlighted, then I have been  disappointed to new levels by Adobe, hugely.  It is not particularly practical or user friendly, and I struggle to understand why they have considered highlighting as a comment. WTF?

Sorry for the sarcasm and I know you have tried to help and thankyou, but regretfully I struggle to wrap my head around how poorly this function has been conceived and executed.

Regards,

[try67]

> I struggle to understand why they have considered highlighting as a comment.

Because that's what they are in the PDF file format specifications...

The only other option is to add them as a sort of graphic element. You can do that by flattening the file with the comments, as I mentioned earlier. That can be done using a simple script, and there are several tools available that can do it for you with a single click, pretty much. Try searching the forum and I'm sure you can find them. If you, I can create it for you. Just be aware that once flattened, you can't edit the highlights (not easily, at least).