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Step 6: Click the Download bottom to get your highlighted PDF. Step 5: Once you are done, click the Apply Changes button at the bottom of the page and then wait for the online tool to finish processing your document. Step 4: To highlight the text, simply drag the cursor over the text you would like to highlight. From the sub-menu that appears, select Highlight and choose the color you would like to use. Step 3: Once the file is uploaded, click the Annotate tab. Next, choose either Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or Web Address (URL) depending on where your document is stored. Note: If your PDF file is hosted online, you will need to click the dropdown arrow available to the right of the Upload PDF File button. Alternatively, click the Upload PDF File button to select the document. Step 2: Drag and drop the document you would like to highlight. Step 1: Visit on your Mac or Windows computer. Below, we will show you how to highlight a PDF using this online tool: Also, users are only allowed 3 tasks per hour when using the free service. The tool, however, limits their free service to documents up to 50 MB or 200 pages. The online tool at makes highlighting PDF files extremely easy. Most of the tools are free – this makes them very appealing to most PDF users. If you have access to an internet connection, highlighting a PDF document should be easy with online tools. If you are using Adobe Reader, you can check whether the document is secured by clicking on File > Properties and then select the Security tab. If your PDF file is not scanned but you still can’t select text in PDF, chances are, the file has security that prevents editing.
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The OCR feature will help you convert the image of the text in your scanned PDF into a highlightable/selectable text. If you are wondering how to enable highlighting in PDF originating from a scanned paper, you may need to work with a PDF tool that has the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) feature. A scan is an image of the original piece of paper. If the PDF file originates from a scanned piece of paper, then the reason you can’t select text in PDF is that there is no “text” to highlight or select.
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It is not uncommon for PDF users to deal with the “PDF won’t let me highlight” issue.
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