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How to Use the PDF Highlighter on Text and Objects
In this resource article, we’ll cover how to use the PDF Editor highlight feature in PDF.Live. With this tool, you can easily call out text or objects on a document. It’s perfect for collaboration between content creators and proofreaders, as well as for students who need to remember important points. The highlight tool is part of PDF.Live and requires no special downloads.
This post answers these queries:
- How do I highlight a PDF?
- How do I remove highlights in a PDF?
- Where can I find an online highlighter for PDF files?
- What’s the best PDF reader with highlighter features?
PDFs make for one of the best file formats for reviewing and editing documents across the web. Many common features you need for reviewing docs are easy to do with a PDF. You can comment, annotate, and, yes, highlight text entirely online. No external software is needed.
This can all be accomplished within the PDF.Live online editor, which allows you to drag and drop any PDF to convert it to an editable PDF. The editor will then open the editor tool, which offers a lot of features. While we won’t be covering all the cool stuff that the PDF.Live editor can accomplish, we will be “highlighting” the highlight feature so you can edit and review PDFs with ease. PDF.Live works in Chrome or any modern browser.
Free PDF Highlighter Tool
Once you’ve converted a document to a PDF and then dragged and dropped it into the editor tool, you will see your PDF displayed in the PDF.Live editor. Select Edit Text under the Popular Editing Tools to open the toolbar at the top of the screen for editing text.
For highlighting features, navigate to the Annotate tab. In this tab, you may not immediately see the Highlight feature. It’s stored with several other reviewing tools that allow you to make modifications to text in a PDF. It appears as the letter A being highlighted with color. You can also jump to this shortcut by pressing the H key on your keyboard.
When you click Highlight, you’ll be able to select text within your PDF to highlight. Just click and drag over the text that you want to be highlighted, and the editor will create a highlight over it.
If you want to make adjustments to your highlight, click the text again and select one of the blue circles at both ends of the text. Drag those circles to the left or right to extend or reduce your highlighted text area.
The Highlight tool is next to a few additional review features that allow you to similarly select areas of text. These review features include Underline, Strikeout, and adding a Squiggly line underneath. Explore these options to better communicate issues that you notice with the PDF you’re reviewing.
But what if you want to highlight a section of a PDF that isn’t text?
Area Highlight
To highlight an area, you’ll need to draw a transparent box anywhere on a PDF that will appear as a “highlight” similar to the Highlight tool. The main difference is that the Area Highlight tool is within the Rectangle tool rather than being its own separate tool.
The Rectangle tool is also within the Annotate tab.
Once selecting this tool, your cursor will change into a bold + icon. You can then drag and click on the PDF to draw a box. This box will then appear on the PDF.
You’ll need to adjust the formatting settings of the box to appear more like a highlighted area. We recommend setting the stroke opacity to 0% and the fill opacity to 50%. You can then make the box colored yellow or any other highlight color you prefer.
You can change the constraints of this highlight by clicking and dragging the small circles along the sides of it. This allows you to highlight a picture or any section of a PDF that isn’t text.
If you ever want to make changes or delete the area highlight, simply click it and drag it somewhere else on your document.
Keyboard shortcut for highlighting
If you want to highlight text on the fly, you can always quickly do this from any tab within the PDF.Live editor. Just press the H button on your keyboard to automatically switch to the highlight text tool.
With this tool active, you can drag and click sections of the text to select them. A mini toolbar will then pop up over the text with a few options available to you.
You can adjust the style of your highlighted text by clicking the Style icon. This allows you to change the highlighted color beyond the default yellow.
You can delete a highlighted area by pressing the trash can icon. PDF.Live also allows you to comment over text in case you need to leave further comments to someone else. This is useful for reviewing different documents.
Get Premium Access to Online PDF Highlighter and More
With a PDF.Live unlimited subscription, you get just that: unlimited tasks every day. Convert documents into PDFs or from PDF formats. Use the online editor to make changes, protect your PDF and much more. From any page on our site, select PDF.Live Unlimited from the main menu, and follow the prompts. You may cancel at any time (but we hope you don’t!).