PDF Editing Issues

How to Highlight and Comment on All Acronym Instances in Adobe Acrobat PDF

Khadija Khan Oct 23, 2026 869 views

Question details

The user wants to find every instance of a specific acronym or word in a PDF, highlight the matches, and add an explanatory comment to all of them in a single workflow.

How to Highlight and Comment on All Acronym Instances in a PDF

Product: Adobe Acrobat
Device & OS: not provided
Scenario: Reviewing or editing a comprehensive PDF document where a specific acronym needs to be uniformly highlighted and defined via comments for readers.
Observed behavior: Standard PDF readers lack a built-in, one-click command to batch highlight and comment on all search results simultaneously without using custom scripts.

Before you start

Before attempting to batch highlight text, ensure your PDF is text-searchable and not a flat image. If it is a scanned document, perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition) first so the software can detect the characters.

Solution 1Recommended

Use an Action Wizard and Custom Script in Adobe Acrobat Pro

Adobe Acrobat DC Pro allows users to run custom JavaScript within the Action Wizard to batch process document text, making it possible to automate highlights and comments.

Because Adobe Acrobat does not natively offer a one-click 'highlight all and comment' feature out of the box, you must rely on the Action Wizard combined with custom JavaScript to achieve this batch processing.

Open the Action Wizard

Launch Adobe Acrobat DC Pro, navigate to the 'Tools' tab, and select 'Action Wizard' from the list of available utilities.

Create a New Action

Click on 'New Action' in the top toolbar. Under the 'Choose tools to add' panel on the left, expand 'More Tools' and select 'Execute JavaScript', then add it to your action steps.

Insert the Highlight Script

Click 'Specify Settings' on the JavaScript step and input a custom JavaScript code designed to loop through document words, identify the target acronym, and apply a highlight annotation with your specific comment payload.

Save and Run

Save the new Action with a recognizable name (e.g., 'Highlight Acronyms'). Open your target PDF document and run the Action to automatically apply the highlights and comments.

Solution 2

Utilize a Third-Party Highlighting Plug-in

If you do not want to write or configure custom JavaScript manually, you can use specialized third-party tools designed to highlight all instances of a word or phrase in Acrobat.

Easily Search, Highlight, and Comment on PDF Text with WPS Office

While batch-scripting requires expensive pro tools and coding knowledge, WPS PDF provides a highly intuitive and fast interface to quickly search through your document, manually apply highlights, and add precise comments to your acronyms seamlessly.

1. Open your PDF: Launch WPS Office and open the PDF document you need to review and annotate.
2. Search for the Acronym: Press 'Ctrl + F' to open the search pane, type the acronym you want to locate, and press Enter to see a list of all occurrences.
3. Navigate and Select: Click through the search results in the pane to instantly jump to each instance of the acronym in the document body.
4. Highlight and Add Comment: Select the target text, choose the 'Highlight' tool from the floating quick menu, and click the 'Comment' icon to type out the acronym's definition or explanatory note.

Quickly search and navigate through all instances of an acronym using the advanced Find tool.Easily apply highlights and pop-up comments to PDF text with a streamlined annotation menu.Fully compatible with standard PDF formats, as well as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.Lightweight, fast, and completely free for basic document reading and annotating.

microsoft office alternative - wps office

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I natively highlight all instances of a word in the free Adobe Reader?

No, the free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader does not support batch processing or running custom Action Wizard scripts. You can only use standard search to find words one by one.

Do highlights and comments added via script show up in other PDF viewers?

Yes, as long as the custom script or tool uses standard PDF annotation properties, the resulting highlights and comments will be fully visible and interactive in standard PDF readers, including WPS PDF and modern web browsers.

Why isn't the script finding the acronyms in my scanned PDF?

If your PDF was created from a scanner, it is likely an image without searchable text data. You must run an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process on the document first to convert the images into selectable text before any script or search tool can recognize the acronyms.

PDF Troubleshooting