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Mark up text with edits

Last updated on Dec 2, 2024 | Also applies to Adobe Acrobat 2017, Adobe Acrobat 2020

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Overview

You can use markup tools to give suggestions for formatting the text, structuring a document, or for providing other edit suggestions. Markups and comments don’t change the actual text in the PDF. See the topics below to see how to:

Highlight, strikethrough, or underline text
Change the color of markups
Delete markups
Add comments to markups
Replace text
Insert text
Export text edits

Note:

The Insert text and Replace selected text commenting tools are now available for shared PDF files, making it easier for you to suggest changes and provide feedback directly within the document.

Highlight, strikethrough, or underline text comment

You can use the Select text or Markup tools to add markups to your text.

Using Select text tool

Open a PDF.
Use the Select text tool to select the text you want to mark up.
From the markup toolbar that appears, take one of the following actions as desired:
- To highlight text, select Highlight text
- To strikethrough the text, select Strikethrough text
- To underline text, select Underline
- To redact text, select Redact Text & Images
- To copy the text, select copy with formatting
- To edit the selected text, select Edit

Using Markup tool

Open a PDF.
From the Quick actions toolbar, select the Highlight text tool and then move the cursor over the text that you want to highlight.
With the Highlight tool selected, you can highlight multiple sections of text by just dragging over the text. Once you’re done, deselect the tool.
To add other markups, expand the Highlight tool menu and select the tool for other markups.

Change the color of the markup

Click the markup.
From the mini toolbar that appears, select the color icon.
From the color palette, select a desired color.

The markup appears in the selected color.

Delete the markup

To delete the markup, select the markup and then select delete

Add a comment to the markup

Double-click the markup.

It pops open a comment box.
Alternatively, click (Control-click for macOS) on the markup and select the note icon.

It opens a comment box.
Type your message in the comment box and then select Post.

Replace text

From the Quick actions toolbar, select Add comment .
Select Replace selected text.
Select the text that you want to replace.

The selected text is crossed out.
Double-click the selected text and then type the text to be inserted or added.

The insertion caret appears. To indicate that a new paragraph should be added, press Enter, and then close the pop-up note without adding text. The paragraph insertion caret appears.

Insert text

From the Quick actions toolbar, expand the Comments tool menu and then select Insert text.
Click between the words or characters where you want to insert text.
Do any of the following:
- Type the text that you want to insert.
- To indicate that a new paragraph should be added, press Enter, and then close the pop-up note without adding text. The paragraph insertion caret appears.
- To indicate that a space should be added, press the spacebar, and then close the pop-up note without adding text. The space insertion caret appears.
Note:

You can also indicate text edits by using the Select tool to select text, right-click the selected text, and then choose a text edit annotation.

Export text edits

In Acrobat for Windows®, you can export text edits directly to the Microsoft® Word document that the PDF is based on to revise the source document. To use this feature, you must use PDFMaker to convert your file from Word to PDF. Before you export your text edits, make sure that insertion comments use the exact text, including spaces and paragraph returns, that you want to add. If you add extra instructional words (such as “Add the following:”), these words will have to be deleted manually from the Word document.

In Acrobat Pro on Windows®, you can export text edit comments directly to an Autodesk AutoCAD document that the PDF is based on to incorporate your edits. To use this feature, you must use PDFMaker in AutoCAD to create the PDF.

The Replace Text option — Replace Text option: Selected text is struck out and new text is added to a linked pop-up note.

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