Fixed – Why Can’t I Highlight Text in PDF Anymore?
Have you ever faced a situation where, while reading an important document, you suddenly realize that you are unable to select text in PDF Adobe document. Well, there are many such users who encounter similar problems every day. If you are one of them too and want to know “Why can’t I highlight text in PDF anymore?”, then follow this article. In this write-up, you will find the effective solution to help you resolve your PDF text selection queries with optimized results and minimized efforts.
Highlighting text, phrases or paragraphs in PDF makes it easy to read important points while reviewing the document later or saving it for future reference. But it can be annoying for users who, while reading an e-book, or a business journal, have the habit of highlighting important text, but unfortunately fail to do so. The selected PDF highlighter doesn’t work on their PDF documents. You might be wondering why it so happens? Well, there are many reasons why users are unable to select text in PDF Adobe, as discussed below :
Top Reasons Why Highlighting is Disabled in PDF?
- Scanned PDF : It is unfortunate that highlighter tool doesn’t work on PDF documents generated from scanned documents or if the they contain images. Why? Because there is no text to select or highlight.
- Document Restrictions : Sometimes authors create PDF documents with certain security settings, to restrict users from making any changes, inclusive of text highlighting. They do it to protect their content from unauthorised use without their permissions.
- Incompatibility issues : using incompatible PDF Viewer tool can hamper basic PDF functions such as highlighting text. Ensure that your PDF Viewer supports annotation permissions.
- Corrupted Document : A corrupted PDF document can lead to numerous issues, and forbids users from highlighting text.
- Password secured PDF : Password-protection on PDF file might be the reason of your not being able to highlight text.
- Browser or software problems : Browser or software glitches can affect the highlighting text function of PDF.
Now that we have detected the possible reasons for the query “why can’t I highlight text in PDF anymore”, let’s find out how to fix “unable to select text in PDF Adobe” problem.
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How Do I Know Whether the Highlight Function is Disabled or Not?
The most common reason for your inability to highlight text in PDF file is the highlight restriction applied to the PDF document by its author. You can easily check this by opening the document. If you can’t select the highlight button (it is greyed out), then it means that the file is restricted.
Verify if the Document is Scanned or Image PDF
When the PDF is a scanned or image-based document, then highlighting text will not work on these documents. Following these simple steps, you can easily address this issue
- Open PDF in Adobe Acrobat
- Go to View Menu >> Choose Tools, then recognize text
- Choose the file to perform OCR on the whole document
- Wait till this process is finished.
Once the process is successfully finished, your PDF file ready with selectable text now. Verify it by highlighting the text again.
How to Enable highlighting in PDF with Adobe Acrobat Pro
If the PDF file is secured with restrictions, then first we need to remove these restrictions in order to use it for selecting or highlighting text with the help of following steps :
- Open PDF with Adobe Acrobat. Choose Tools >> Protect >> Encrypt >> Remove Security
- Click OK to remove the security restrictions, enter permission password and then hit OK button again
Now that the restrictions are removed, you can easily use the highlight button (Pen tool) to select and highlight text.
Repeat the process again on another secured PDF file.
How Do I Unlock Highlighting in PDF using Effective Solution
The above-mentioned methods are useful for a handful of documents only. If you want a quick fix solution that will work on multiple PDF documents, then using a professional utility is advised. One such solution is CubexSoft PDF Unlocker Tool that provides fully automated solution to remove password security from PDFs and enable all permission rights on them. You can easily unlock PDF documents protected with both user level and owner level password protection with this smart utility. In addition, the tool is capable of removing all types of restrictions from PDF including copying, editing, printing, highlighting etc. It is workable on all Windows OS editions, including 11, 10, 8.1, 8 etc.
PDF Unlocker Tool : Working Guide
First, you need to download and open the software on your PC
Choose locked PDF files using Add File/Add Folder buttons
If you want to remove unnecessary files, tap Remove button
Tap on change button to select the location to save the resultant files and press Unlock button
The software will start the PDF Unlock process and fix unable to highlight text in PDF
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Remedies to Other Reasons that Prohibits Highlighting Text in PDF
For issues regarding outdated tools, read-only settings, corrupt PDF, password security, browser/software issues, write protection, the solutions may vary. Consider doing the following actions :
- Software Update : Make sure that you are using the latest edition of PDF Reader. If not, then update it immediately.
- Repair or Recreate PDF : If you suspect a corrupt PDF, try repairing it using PDF Repair tools. In case it fails, then recreate PDF from the source document.
- Change Permissions : If the PDF is set as read-only or write protected, you are required to change the permissions. Check and verify the document properties and make necessary changes to the document settings, if required.
- Enter password : For password-protected PDF documents, provide the right password to unlock highlighting functions.
- Troubleshoot Browser/Software : Clear your browser’s cache or try using another PDF Reader, if the problem continues.
Conclusion
When a user encounters a situation where they are unable to select text in PDF Adobe document. It becomes quite difficult to find an effective way to enable the highlight option. Based on these situations, we have discussed some solutions. You can choose any manual or professional method, as per your requirement and enable highlighting text feature effortlessly.
FAQs
Q. Why can’t I highlight text in PDF anymore?
A. There are several reasons for this issue such as document restrictions, corrupted document, outdated Adobe Reader version and many more.
Q. How do I unlock highlighting in PDF?
A. You can use several methods depending upon the cause of this issue. There are multiple manual methods or you can use a professional solution to resolve your issue.
Q. How many PDF documents can this tool handle at a time?
A. There is no restriction on the number and size of PDF files. Tool can unlock unlimited PDF documents of any size and enable highlighting permission on them, at once and without interruption.
