Highlight a PDF in four steps
- Open the PDF editor and choose your PDF.
- Pick Highlight and choose a color in the bar above the page.
- Drag across the text you want to mark, or click a single word to highlight just that word.
- Click Download to save the highlighted PDF.
Highlighting that follows the text
Drag diagonally from the first word to the last one. For a selection that spans several lines, each line gets its own highlight bar that starts and ends at the words you covered — the result looks like the highlighting in a PDF reader, not a rectangle across the page. A quick click on a word highlights the whole word.
Changing or removing a highlight
- Switch to Select and click a highlight to change its color or opacity.
- Drag it or its corners to adjust it by hand.
- Press Delete to remove it, or Ctrl+Z to undo the last highlight.
Other ways to mark up a PDF
Highlights are just one kind of markup. Draw freehand underlines or circles with Draw, point at something with an arrow from Shapes, and add comments in the margin with the Text tool. To hide something rather than emphasize it, use Whiteout or Redact.
Studying with color codes? Use one color per topic — for example yellow for definitions, green for examples and blue for dates. The color you choose stays selected for the next highlights.