To highlight text in PDF, you can use online tools to upload your document, use the option to mark up the text, pick the right color, as well as finalize, export, and download your document.
PDF text highlighting draws the reader’s attention to important text parts and elements and facilitates referencing while also making research much easier. Plus, it enhances collaboration between colleagues, students, or any individuals using the same PDF file, as it helps them spot parts that may need clarification or discussion.
If you are looking for an easy and quick way to highlight texts in PDF, this article can help. We share the steps on how to highlight text in PDF using our tool, as well as tips to increase efficiency and edit or remove highlights.
How to Highlight Text in a PDF File
To highlight text in a PDF file, you should use reliable software such as PDF.net, which does not require downloading the highlight tool for PDF documents. Our PDF text marker can help you streamline this process without hassle—all you need to do is take the following steps:
#1. Visit Our Website to Upload Your Document
First, you need to visit PDF.net and upload your document to the website. Once you do so, click on the ‘Annotate’ button in the header. On the right side, you will see the box saying ‘Drop file here to annotate.’ You can either drag your file into this box or click on ‘Choose file’ and select it manually from your computer.
#2. Choose the Highlight Tool
After you upload the document, click the pen button to enable the highlight option. You can lock the PDF marker to highlight text in a straight line or highlight text in PDF free-hand, whichever suits you best.
To highlight a part of the text, move the cursor to the desired part. You can also use the left menu to pick the highlight color or create the nuance yourself.
#3. Finalize and Download Your File
The final step on how to mark text in PDFs is to finalize the process by ensuring you have highlighted all the parts you wanted. Next, you should select the download button in the top right corner. Lastly, choose the format to export your file.
Why Highlighting Text in PDFs is Important
Knowing how to highlight text in a PDF is important because it involves quick detection of the most important text elements. Spotting the main sections in reports, academic papers, and legal documents quickly can vastly improve your focus.
Additionally, taking notes when checking a PDF document with highlighted text is much easier and can enhance your studying process. Similarly, the highlighted text helps you expedite your research.
Highlighting texts can also help you address the main concepts when reviewing and preparing the document for other parties and for further use. This automatically enhances the collaboration between the individuals using the same file.
Moreover, the highlighting process for digital PDF documents boosts digital efficiency and is eco-friendly. Last but not least, highlights in PDF files make it time-conserving when referencing the same document in the future.
3 Tips for Effective PDF Text Highlighting
You can highlight text on your PDF files, make them neat, and prepare them for various uses by paying special attention to the technical and logical steps that would make this process easier.
Let’s examine the top three tips we have for you:
#1. Choose the Right Color
Color highlighting in PDFs helps you organize the key topics, facts, and figures in texts. This is why it is important to use different colors for different parts of the text you want to highlight.
For instance, you can use yellow to cover the main ideas in a text and highlight all examples in red and small details in blue. This will help you and other readers filter and categorize the most essential text aspects easily.
#2. Highlight Key Sections
Another tip on how to highlight text in a PDF efficiently is to highlight key sections only. Highlighting entire paragraphs may bring confusion, as you cannot select the main points and minor details this way. Also, overdoing the highlight process can make your PDF text look messy and unreadable.
That said, we recommend carefully reading your target text and identifying the key phrases and sentences within paragraphs. Later, you can narrow everything down and identify the main ideas.
For highly readable texts, you should consider the following highlighting rules:
- One sentence per paragraph
- Highlighting keywords instead of full sentences
- No more than three highlighted words in a row
- Not more than 1/3 of a page highlighted
In addition, you need to ensure that you use the online PDF annotation tools correctly to avoid aesthetic and technical issues.
#3. Ensuring Technical Correctness
Making your highlights in PDF texts perfect also implies being well-versed when using PDF annotation features or other tools for this purpose. Before all else, your highlights should look uniform.
This means that they should not cross the lines within a paragraph and that you should not highlight half of the words or half of the phrases. Zooming in on the text and using a suitable tool (freehand or straight-line) can help you achieve uniformity.
Furthermore, choosing the wrong color may affect the text's aesthetics and make it unreadable. This is why we advise you to tweak your nuances while considering the font and background color. You can even use the fill color option to adapt the background to the existing font color before highlighting your text.
Finally, using some of the best PDF highlight tools that do not downgrade file quality can prevent you from fixing blurry texts in PDFs or from having your file corrupted.
How to Remove or Edit Highlights in a PDF
To remove or edit highlights in a PDF, you need the same tools you used to annotate PDFs. Primarily, you should open the tool, load your document, and select the parts you want to remove.
The instructions on how to select text in a PDF are simple—all you need to do is pick the selection tool and click on the highlights. Then, depending on your software, click the remove button on the website or your keyboard.
Another way to do this is to select text and use the ‘rubber’ option, which allows you to use your mouse to click and hover over highlights to remove them.
Editing the existing highlights in PDF is just as simple. You need to use the same tools, click on the highlighted text section, and adjust the border color and opacity. These options are usually featured in the PDF annotation menu next to the selection option.
It is important to say that annotating and online PDF editing are different. Specifically, if you want to edit highlighted text on scanned PDFs, you can use more advanced editing options, such as a PDF-to-Word converter (the same one you could use to extract tables from PDFs).
You can also use OCR technology to ensure the most accurate conversions. After the conversion is over, you will be able to implement edits.
How PDF.net Can Help You Highlight PDFs Efficiently
PDF.net can help you highlight PDFs efficiently by providing you with an easy-to-use PDF annotator. You can quickly streamline this process, as it only takes a few steps—document uploading, using versatile highlighting tools, and downloading the file.
If you wish to make more advanced edits to prepare your original PDF file for highlights, you can try our PDF editor and tweak your font and background color. Ultimately, our PDF-to-Word converter lets you change your document format and make it easier to modify.
How to Highlight Text in PDF FAQ
#1. Can I highlight multiple sections of text in one PDF?
You can highlight multiple sections of text in one PDF by using a script that will process the page dimensions and implement highlights on every page in the same area. Also, you can use the ‘CTRL’ button on your keyboard to highlight multiple text sections regardless of whether you want to color the text or place a comment.
#2. How do I highlight text in a scanned PDF?
To highlight text in a scanned PDF, you can use online PDF annotation software tools like PDF.net. You can also convert your scanned PDF file to Word with the OCR technology and add highlights after conversion.
#3. Can I change the color of the highlight in PDF.net?
You can change the color of the highlight in PDF.net by loading your document, selecting the parts of text you want to change, and changing its border color and opacity with this online software.
#4. Why can't I select text in a PDF?
You can’t select text in a PDF because the document may be corrupted, in read mode only, edit-proof, or your reader may be outdated.