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Participant
January 6, 2018
Question

I can't select text on a Photoshop PDF

  • January 6, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 4147 views

I haven't had this problem until recently, but I can't get any of the text on a Photoshop PDF to select after I save it. I need the text to be able to be highlighted because it's a resume, but the entire document is selected instead. It almost acts like a jpg, but it's not. I saved with layers checked, and i didn't change any of the PDF settings. Anyone know what might be the issue? I'm using Photoshop CC.

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3 replies

Derek Cross
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 9, 2021

If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro you can export the PDF as a Word or RTF document.

Participant
April 9, 2021

It's because you may have different fonts or different styles in 1 textbox, just set every text inside 1 textbox in the same format and it works for me.

jane-e
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 9, 2021

@Lam5EC1 wrote:

It's because you may have different fonts or different styles in 1 textbox, just set every text inside 1 textbox in the same format and it works for me.


 

No, that is wrong.

 

Using different typefaces or styles does not affect whether the text is editable in Acrobat. Using the same format will not make a difference in whether the text can be edited.

 

There are two possibilities when you cannot edit text:

  1. It is an image. When clicked with the Selection tool, the entire image will be selected.
  2. The text was converted to Outlines and is no longer text.

 

~ Jane

Andrea Ubi
Participant
February 17, 2020

Hi, 
did you find a solution for this? I wrote my CV on PS to get a personalized layout but I cannot select any text from it. I guess would be better for a recruiter to just select and copy my email address (just an example)

Andrea 

Participant
January 22, 2021

I have the same issue. From the "Education" part I can only select the title but not the content. It is driving me crazy!!

Michael Bullo
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 22, 2021

Are you able to open the PDF in Illustrator? If so, it could be a good way to poke around the document and see what's going on. For example…
- Is all of the content getting rasterised into a single image?
- Is the text still vector but getting outlined?

- etc...