How to Restore the PDF Text Highlighter Instead of a Colored Box
Question details
The user wants to restore the standard transparent text highlight tool because their current highlighting tool is creating opaque colored boxes that cover the text.
- Product
- PDF Editor
- Device & OS
- not provided
- Scenario
- Annotating or reviewing a PDF document by trying to highlight specific sentences or words.
- Observed behavior
- Selecting text results in a solid colored text box or area highlight being drawn over the text, hiding it completely instead of applying a transparent background highlight.
Check if your PDF document is a scanned image or a text-searchable file, as true text highlighting requires selectable text, whereas scanned pages often force the software to use an area highlight box.
Select the Correct Highlight Text Tool in Comment Settings
The most common reason for this issue is accidentally having the 'Text Box' or 'Area Highlight' tool active instead of the standard 'Highlight Text' tool.
PDF editors often group similar annotation tools together. If you select the 'Area Highlight' or 'Text Box' tool by mistake, dragging over text will draw a rectangular box rather than snapping a transparent highlight to the text characters.
Navigate to the Comment or Tools panel, usually found on the right sidebar or the top menu ribbon of your PDF reader.
Locate the annotation toolbar and click specifically on the 'Highlight Text' icon (typically represented by a marker with a 'T'), ensuring you do not click the 'Text Box' or 'Area Highlight' icon.
Apply the newly selected tool to a sentence in your document to verify it produces a transparent highlight that snaps to the text.
Check Highlight Properties and Disable 'Keep Tool Selected'
If the correct tool is selected but still behaving improperly, modifying the tool's properties and resetting its continuous use setting can resolve the visual glitch.
Highlight and Annotate PDFs Seamlessly with WPS Office
Avoid frustrating tool mix-ups with WPS PDF's intuitive commenting interface. WPS Office provides a clear, dedicated text highlighter that automatically recognizes text and applies perfectly transparent standard highlights without drawing solid boxes.
- 1. Open PDF in WPS: Launch WPS Office and open your PDF document.
- 2. Select Comment Tab: Navigate to the 'Comment' tab located on the top ribbon.
- 3. Choose Highlight Tool: Click the 'Highlight' button. You can click the drop-down arrow next to the icon to quickly select your preferred highlight color.
- 4. Highlight Text: Click and drag your cursor over the desired text to seamlessly apply a clean, transparent highlight.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my highlight cover the text completely in my PDF?
This happens if the tool's opacity is set too high (making it a solid color) or if you are using an 'Area Highlight' or 'Shape' tool with a solid fill color instead of the standard text highlighter. Check the tool's Properties by right-clicking the markup to lower the opacity or remove the fill.
Can I change the default color of the PDF text highlighter?
Yes. In most PDF editors like Acrobat or WPS PDF, you can change the color by right-clicking highlighted text, selecting Properties, and choosing a new color from the Appearance tab. You can then check 'Make Properties Default' to use this color for future highlights.
Why am I forced to draw a box instead of selecting individual text?
If your PDF is a scanned image or a flattened image file without Optical Character Recognition (OCR) applied, the software cannot detect individual letters. As a result, it falls back to the 'Area Highlight' tool, drawing a box over the region. You need to run an OCR tool on the document to enable actual text selection.
