Participant

Question

Highlighting all instances of a term [2018]

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 4, 2018
6 replies
27931 views

In old versions of Adobe Acrobat reader if you did a search for a term or a word, all instances of that term/word were highlighted at the same time. IN the version that I unfortunately upgraded to, if you search for a term you only see one instance of it until you move forward. I want to be able to see all instances of a word at the same time - how do I do this?

I seem to be using Acrobat Reader DC, if that is relevant

How to

S

Spacelabs Healthcare

Participant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79rY3GGpZEI
This video helped me

sueg30627541

Participant

I know this was a while back, but I know the foolproof method for making this work. Open the find window, and start typing something. Then backspace and retype, just invent any kind of edit to the word you are typing, and every instance of that search word or phrase will magically appear on each page. This is an extremely valuable tool!

B

BonnieBT

Participant

Thank you so much for this! My experience with Adobe Acrobat Reader has always been that upon entering a term to Find, all instances of that term will be highlighted. That recently stopped working. Maybe it has something to do with the upgrade to 2023.003.20269? At any rate, it stopped working and I couldn't get it back, but this hack works like a charm.

sueg30627541

Participant

I'm just sooooo happy I figured it out. If it stops working, which it does sometimes. Just close acrobat and start again! Yahoo!!!!!

L

LawStudent2021

Participant

Is there currently a way to highlight all isntances of a term in a large PDF?

I need to creat a colour code of key words in the document. Any help would be most appreciated!

S

Spacelabs Healthcare

Participant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79rY3GGpZEI

This will help

S

Shoshquanshian

Participant

I can confirm that I'm looking at a page where all the matched results to the search are highlighted, and they continue to other pages. This is definitely functionality of Reader but it seems no one knows how to reporduce consistently.

try67

Community Expert

How do you know it was done in Reader? How do you know it was done autmatically and not by hand?

By the way, the script I linked to above will also work in Reader DC...

jane-e

Community Expert

Kate, one other thing that might help is to use Edit > Advanced Search instead. It will list all the instances and you can click each to navigate through.

aamera8614558

Participant

and Then what? how t highlight all of the word "Conferences" by yellow colour or any colour

sueg30627541

Participant

See my post below from May 10, 2023. The highlight color is whatever is chosen in preferences. If it stops working, close Acrobat and reopen the document and try again. That usually works.

try67

Community Expert

No version of Reader, or even Acrobat, has such a feature built-in. You must have been using some kind of third-party tool...

I've developed a (paid-for) script for Acrobat (and Reader) which allows you to do that, if you're interested.

You can find it here: Custom-made Adobe Scripts: Acrobat -- Highlight All Instances of a Word or Phrase in a PDF

M

Mattijs5EBE

Participant

He means like this. I managed to get it to work for this document but not for another. I have no idea why or how to turn it off and on but if someone knows, please inform me!

旷

旷27182263xya1

Participant

I found one tricky way to open that. First ctrl+F, type in "/", don't do any thing and straight delete the "/" you typed in, and then type in the word you want to search, and then press ENTER. This method will highlight all the words you want to search in the pdf. It works for me.

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