Copy Highlighted Text in Pdf file

Report · Sep 09, 2011

Hi everyone,

Recently I downloaded the Adobe Reader X (version 10.0). This version allows me to highlight text (in yellow colour). However, If I want to copy a highlighted block of text (for instance to paste into a Word document), I am not able to do this. When I select the highlighted text and click on the right mouse click, it doesn't give me the opportunity to copy this text. Therefore, I was wondering whether I can copy the highlighted text in another way?

Thanks in advance for a reply.

Kind regards,

Sleighon

Report · Aug 11, 2014

In Acrobat, I highlight a section of text using the selection tool;

I then go to edit/copy (or command-C);

In Word or Safari or Chrome or Firefox...I do edit/paste (or command-V);

I then get a lot of "funny little boxes" with "?" simbols within.

Why? How to get back to standard copy/paste function?

Report · Aug 11, 2014

pideja, This sometimes happen when a PDF does not have useful text you can copy You can think of it as fault in the PDF. It isn't a fault in Reader.

Report · Jan 28, 2014

+1 on the almost complete fail on the user experience with the Highlight function in Acrobat.

When reviewing a document, why does someone go to the trouble to Highlight text in the first place?

Usually, it's because you want to draw attention for yourself and others to key phrases. In a business context, that almost always involves repurposing the content in other software outside the PDF rather than only sharing the annotated PDF with others.

Why can one not simply right-click any highlighted area and select copy from a context menu? THAT IS WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO DO.

In fact, let's go one further:

The Comments List is useless. Once you've highlighted important text passages, the Comments List shows you each highlighting location with a timestamp as an entry in the list, but NOT THE HIGHLIGHTED TEXT! What is the point? For what percentage of Acrobat users is that the desired functionality?

Why can I not spend the time while reading to highlight important passages and then EXPORT/COPY THE COMPLETE LIST OF HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGES? Again, this is what people want to do. And this threaded conversation is proof.

Report · Sep 25, 2014

hold alt and shift

click and drag to select

ctrl c - copy

ctrl v - paste

Report · Apr 05, 2015

I am on a mac. tex23's solution is good but not perfect. If you just hold shift while clicking, it highlights all of the highlighted text at once.

Report · Jun 01, 2015

Yes! Please Adobe, your software is awesome except for this unfortunate flaw. When researching I like to read through a document and highlight particular passages of importance.. but when it comes to compiling my research by copying and pasting the highlighted passages in to a word document, I have no other option but to go back through and manually highlight those same passages from outside of the already specified highlighted area and manually delete what is not needed. It seems counter intuitive that parts of the text that are flagged as important aren't immediately easy to copy and paste?

Report · Jun 03, 2015

I can't believe that no one answered this yet in almost 4 years. I guess we are basically without any REAL support here. You can hold down the SHIFT key and select but the selection is uncontrollable. I tried using tex23's ALT-SHIFT but on the OCRed document I am using, it selects random groups of letters column-wise. HUH?!

The correct solution, that is somewhat of a kludge, not to mention a PITA, is to temporarily turn off highlighting via a keyboard shortcut (OS X--can't find ones for 'Doze, sorry):

CMD-SHIFT-8

Now isn't that an intuitive shortcut? Now you can select down to the letter.

To turn highlighting back on:

CMD-8

That's it… Simple enough but it really shouldn't be required. Then again, I find all of Adobe's user interfaces seriously lacking. They apparently don't have human factors engineers or test their products with REAL users. For what they charge, that is unforgivable.

UPDATE:

I hadn't seen the answer given by cryptdecrypt, which is to enter Read Mode, whatever that is. This is even better than toggling highlighting on/off and requires one shortcut, but two actual key events for on then off:

Ctrl-CMD-H (OS X)

Ctrl-H ('Doze)

What's better about this solution is it allows you to select as usual within the highlighted section without turning highlighting off. This way you don't have to keep toggling highlighting on/off many times while you navigate to highlighted sections and select text. You can leave Read Mode on until you want to highlight a new section, bookmark, etc.

This is 100% non-intuitive and should not be required at all.

Report · Sep 12, 2016

It's possible that as of September 12, 2016, a full five years after the original post, that Adobe has finally fixed this with its latest update. Some of the confusion for me stemmed from responses 10 through 13 or so. The steps I take:

Click anywhere on document outside of highlighted text.

Right click, then check "Select Tool"

Shift click within the highlighted area and select your text. It's twitchy - not precise. Might at first select the whole goddamn paragraph, but try again - a little futzing, you can grab what you need.

Edit - Copy or Control C

Paste the text into your document, onto your wall, onto your forehead, wherever.

Sincerely hope this helps someone, somewhere in time.

Report · Mar 13, 2018

doesn't solve my problem (copying 1000 such nuggets) but it's a start

Report · Oct 11, 2016

Both the read mode Cmd + Ctrl + H as well as the Shift + Alt + Drag-select work arounds are superb.

However, I logged in specifically to state that this is still the pinnacle of bad UX I have yet encountered in Acrobat and the fact that this goes unaddressed by Adobe is outrageous.

Report · Mar 29, 2017

no need to select outside what you highlighted as I read on other replies, you just have to hold shift and select, that is it.

Report · Apr 10, 2017

Hi Sleighon,

Probably you can try this:

Right click on your highlighted text, Use ‘Enable Text Selection’. Then you can copy the text the normal way

Worked for me. I hope it works for you too.

Report · Apr 19, 2017

With the latest April 2017 release of Acrobat DC, you can follow these steps to copy highlighted text:-

(1) Right-click the highlighted text, and then choose Enable Text Selection.

(2) Select the text from highlight that you want to copy, right-click, and then choose Copy.

Report · Mar 13, 2018

I figured I would be able to export to word and then use the highlight there to isolate my results. I'm frustrated to note that underline comes out as a true underline, but the highlight is not a true - searchable - highlight. This leaves me with two options:

1) can I turn all highlights in PDF into underline (I think not)

2) what is the status of the yellow highlight which comes to word - what kind of item is it? I can't figure this out either. Thoughts, hivemind?

Report · Mar 13, 2018

Highlights don't belong to text in PDF, they are just a box in the same place. So I imagine some kind of anchored graphic.

Report · Mar 13, 2018

Yes, I realise that (and it explains most of the problems above). Moving text into word, it's almost like it's a hybrid - format painter can apply it elsewhere, but even then, it doesn't recognise it as a highlight. perhaps I should go and bother the good people of microsoft.