Using the highlight tool for drawing

[Réjean]

Hello all,

I work in a construction firm and all of our plans are in PDF format. We usually print them out before working directly on them and drawing over the lines for bidding. This use up a lot of paper and with the current pandemic it is getting hard to find more. I started trying to use the highlight tool to draw over the plans in Acrobat, but I noticed that while I can draw on certains files, on others, it won't allow it and the cursor shows up as trying to highlight text all over the picture. Is there any way to fix that and allows me to draw on all files?

Thank you.

[try67 · Accepted solution]

The Highlight tool is meant for text. Use one of the other drawing tools under the Comment panel.

[Réjean]

Hello,

This is exactly what I needed. Thank you!

[Ken4Pyro]

Try67:

While your answer is indeed corrrect, Acrobat Pro DC does have the ability to use a highlighter on portions of a document for other than text, in essence free hand drawing with a highlighter.

I know it's possible, as I have done so.  The horrible part of this for me is that for the life of me I cannot remember how I was able to make it work in this fashion.

Here's an example.  The yellow lines are drawn at random with the highlighter in Acrobat Pro DC.

When I selected one of these lines, and right-clicked for "properties", here's what I saw:

Trust me, I can highlight text without any issue.  I just need to find the way back to freehand with a highlighter.

many thanks,

Ken Wagoner

Harrisonville, Missouri

[Ken4Pyro]

Here's a quick follow up.
Today I installed an add-on Java script utility to flatten a file.  What I've come to understand is that the text which was in the document is no longer regarded as "text".  
When this happened, I was able to freehand draw with the highlighter tool.

It may seem a bit of a stretch or a work around, granted, but it worked for me.

Ken