Can't select block of text

[lindad34092833]

I have updated to Adobe Acrobat DC and can no longer select blocks of text in pdfs. I have the select tool active, I am trying to select a whole sentence to highlight. I am using a pdf in which I have previously been able to perform this function. I am trying to place the curser at beginning of sentence and drag to the end of the sentence to select whole sentence before I highlight it.  I can no longer do this WHY? It's driving me mad.

Hoping someone can help

[Michal22697359sf8f]

Brief update, my issue came back despite all the above settings changes.  I often "print to PDF" and have been in the past, however Adobe no longer auto-recognize text when "print to PDF" even if whole document is text. What I have to do is "save to PDF", text is recognized and selectable at that point. 

[Meenakshi Negi]

Hi Michal,

Thank you for reaching out.

Would you mind elaborating on the issue? Are you using the Print to PDF option to convert the file to PDF?

If yes, could you please share the complete steps you do to create a PDF?

Also, let us know the format file you are converting. 

Share the Acrobat and OS versions on the machine.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[sims1970]

I have a macbook pro. Go to Preferences => General, and unselect the box saying "Make Select tool select images before text." Took me weeks to figure this out.

[Vicki25853327o2k3]

Yep, this solution does not work for me either.  I started my troubleshooting with Microsoft BECAUSE, I only have this problem with Microsoft PUBLISHER generated PDFs.  When I save a Publisher file as PDF, I simply cannot select text.  Just one word or line, never whole paragraphs.  The Arrow pointer will not change to the Text Selector pointer.  Further experimenting with PDFs created by WORD and POWERPOINT, I have found I can indeed select text as normal in Adobe.  I also found this problem occurred when opening PUBLISHER generated PDFs in browsers  (CHROME and MS EDGE and FIREFOX).  PDFs generated in WORD and POWERPOINT (I didn't bother tryng EXCEL) all opened in CHROME and EDGE where I was able to successfully select as much text as I liked in ALL of these browsers.  So that lead me to believe it's a Microsoft problem.  Upon speaking to Microsoft Help staff, they believe it's Adobe's problem BECAUSE they found in Adobe's Acrobat Reader DC that in the Adobe Export PDF tab, where the dropdown menu gives you the various document formats to convert to (ie. *docx, *doc, *rtf, *xlsx, *pptx, *jpg, *tiff and *png) there is NO option to export to PUBLISHER(*pub) so Microsoft believe this is now an Adobe problem and I'm to speak to them.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn't - I still have this problem and no solution yet.

[LSTC]

I tried all of these things, with no luck. Here's what solved it for me. There was an invisible text box of some kind on top of the actual text boxes I wanted to edit. It looked like the text boxes were joined or something. I cright-clicked a blank spot and selected "Edit a PDF" and was able to click and remove the conjoined box. I then recreated the boxes I needed.

[Paul28315305jqvc]

Hi

I too was having all sorts of issues and none of the great suggestions here seemed to work for me. For some reason, if I go to the 'downloads' folder and right click and then choose to "open with Adobe Acrobat Reader 2020", which is the first option in my list, the document then allowed me to select text!  Weird!

[JohnAR · Accepted solution]

It might be a scanned copy, Not all PDFs are created by following general norms, creating a PDF file from scratch, or converting an existing text document into PDF format. Sometimes, scanned images are bundled and merged into a PDF file. Such a file can be described as a scanned PDF. They differ from standard PDFs in that editing them is usually not possible.

 If so, use OCR to convert it into a regular file. Here's how:

1. Visit PDF24 or a similar site that uses OCR to recognize the text in files.
2. Click on the Choose files button.
3. Upload the scanned PDF file.
4. Allow the tool to complete its processing.
5. Download the converted version of the PDF file.

This has worked for me whenever the provider of the original PDF wasn't aware of the difference between scanned PDF's and "regular" PDF copies.

HTH, JohnR

[soniame]

This FINALLY worked for me!!! I've done everything to try to fix this issue and your recommendation/answer did it! THANK YOU SOO MUCH!

[JohnAR]

Glad to hear this worked for you. 👍🏽

[defaultxtnyp286f668]

If you fix this issue Adobe will just send an update that breaks it again.  Adobe programmers are no good when it comes to doing anything with text.  The simple universal avility to select text is beyond them.