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How to Use the Highlighter in Adobe Reader

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This wikiHow teaches you how to highlight text in a PDF document using Adobe's free Adobe Reader DC app which is available for Mac or PC, or using the Preview app on Mac.

Need help creating, merging, or converting PDF files? Try wikiHow's PDF Toolkit, a free and easy-to-use custom tool to help you be more productive with your documents.

  1. 1

    Open a PDF document in Adobe Reader. Do so by opening the red Adobe Reader app with the stylized, white A icon. Then click on File in the menu bar at the top of the screen, click on Open..., select the PDF document you want to type on and click on Open.

    • If you don't already have Adobe Reader, it's available for free from get.adobe.com/reader and can be used with Windows, Mac, and Android operating systems.
  2. 2

    Click on the highlighter tool. It's the marker icon on the right side of the toolbar at the top of the window.

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  3. 3

    Position the cursor at the beginning of the text you want to highlight.

  4. 4

    Click and hold, then drag the cursor across the text.

  5. 5

    Release the click when you are done. The text is now highlighted.

  6. 6

    Click on File in the menu bar and Save in the drop-down menu. Doing so saves your highlighting.

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  1. 1

    Open a PDF document in the Preview app. Do so by double-clicking on the blue Preview icon that looks like overlapping snapshots, then clicking on File in the menu bar and Open... in the drop-down menu. Select a file in the dialog box and click on Open.

    • Preview is Apple's native image viewer app that's automatically included with most versions of Mac OS.
  2. 2

    Click on the highlighter tool. It's the marker icon in the right-center of the toolbar at the top of the window.

    • To change the color of the highlighting tool, click on the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the marker icon and click on the color you prefer for highlighting.
  3. 3

    Position the cursor at the beginning of the text you want to highlight.

  4. 4

    Click and hold, then drag the cursor across the text.

  5. 5

    Release the click when you are done. The text is now highlighted.

  6. 6

    Click on File in the menu bar and Save in the drop-down menu. Doing so saves your highlighting.

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Add New Question

  • Question

    How can I highlight text in a PDF on a mobile device?

    wikiHow Staff Editor

    This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

    wikiHow Staff Editor

    wikiHow Staff Editor

    Staff Answer

    One easy way to do it is to download a PDF highlighter or note-taker app. Try an app like PDFelement, PDF Expert, or Highlighter.

  • Question

    Is there a way to highlight text in a scanned PDF document?

    wikiHow Staff Editor

    This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

    wikiHow Staff Editor

    wikiHow Staff Editor

    Staff Answer

    You wouldn't be able to use the highlighter tool in Acrobat Reader for this unless you first OCR the document (that is, run software that converts the images to text). You can do this with Acrobat Pro, or use a program like ExportPDF to turn the file into a text document.

  • Question

    How do I erase the highlight on text?

    Community Answer

    The best way to do this is to highlight the highlighted text using your cursor. After that, you will see that there will be an 'h' icon which will already be selected. Simply click that to get rid of the highlight.

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About This Article

Article SummaryX

1. Open the PDF in Adobe Reader.
2. Click the highlighter button.
3. Click and hold the mouse before the text.
4. Drag the cursor to the end of the text.
5. Release the mouse button.

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How to Use the Highlighter in Adobe Reader

Source: https://www.wikihow.com/Highlight-Text-in-a-PDF-Document