Cannot highlight text on iPad (Apple) Pencil in PDF that I can highlight text with finger on iPhone

[CJAII]

Hi

I think the headline says it all, I have the EU AI act () stored on both iCloud drive and Adobe cloud. I started annotating the EU AI act on an iPhone 15 pro with iOS 18.3.2 using Acrobat Reader Mobile 25.03.05. This works well but is a pain on the small screen so I was looking forward to editing it on the iPad Air 5 with iPadOS 18.3.2 and using the same Acrobat Reader 25.03.05. Apple pencil on the iPad that works flawlessly in e.g., Freeform on the iPad. 

I am experiencing the following issues:

- Highlightings I did on the phone only partially (a small part) are visible on the phone. Weirdly, when I open the PDF in Apple's preview app on the iPhone (the one that comes up when you tap the PDF in Apple's 'Files' app), all the highlights from the iPhone are there.

- I cannot highlight anything on the iPad at all. With my finger, the purple-ish 'pre-highlight' (the color you select with what you want highlighted) appears but when I let go, it doesn't stay and become the highlight color like it did on the iPhone. With the pencil, 95% of. the time I cannot even get anything marked with the pre-highlight color.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

Regards

Chris

[Amal.]

Hi there,

Hope you're doing well, and thank you for reaching out and sharing your experience with us.

Regarding the issue where "highlights from iPhone are only partially visible or not showing in Acrobat on iPad", this could be related to how annotation data syncs or renders across platforms. Could you please confirm if this happens with a specific PDF file or with all PDFs? If possible, try opening a different PDF to see if the issue persists. It would also be helpful if you could share a sample file where the issue occurs so we can investigate on our end.

As for the issue with being unable to highlight using the Apple Pencil — can you let us know what exactly happens when you attempt to highlight text? Do you see any error messages? If so, please share a screenshot of the error. Additionally, a short video recording showing the steps you're taking and how the issue appears would really help us understand the problem better.

[sebastian_6304]

Hello,

I have the same issue with not being able the highlight or underline text using Apple Pencil in Adobe Reader on my iPadPro. I am able to highlight text with my finger but this is more than inconvinient (big fingers). If I try to use the Pencil it just moves the page. The pencil seems to work though because I can write in the pdf without any problems.

I hope there is a fix otherwise I need to use PDF Expert again.

Kind regards,
Sebastian.

[CJAII · Accepted solution]

Hi Sebastian, sorry to hear you have the same problems as I have but happy that I am not alone. I was able to resolve my issue by 1) doing a fresh download of the document 2) storing it on Adobe Cloud and 3) starting over with the new copy. I had done the cloud upload before with the copy I originally had but it didnt worl. Now it works. I find that weird but I have no other information to offer as to what I did. 

[sebastian_6304]

Hi,

thank you so much. Now it works, but I have no clue why. Nevertheless, I can now check and comment the theses of my students.

Thank you.

[Amal.]

Hi there

@CJAII@sebastian_6304@CJAII@sebastian_6304

Hope you are doing well and thank you for sharing what worked for you. We are happy to hear that its up and working now. Feel free to contact us if you experience any issue in the future.😊