How to highlight PDFs using Adobe's free Reader program

PDF for Lawyers: How to highlight PDFs using Adobe's free Reader program

A reader emailed to ask how to highlight text in Adobe Reader. It used to be that you couldn't do this in the free Reader program. But now you can! Here's how you do it. First, you'll need to have the latest version of Adobe Reader, which is Adobe Reader X. (If you don't have it then you can download it from here). Then follow these steps, which are also depicted in the screenshot below.

1. Click the COMMENT tab, then
2. Click the HIGHTLIGHT TEXT choice
3. Drag your mouse across the area that you want to highlight.

CAVEAT: this won't work on a PDF that hasn't been made text searchable. Reader won't OCR (or render a PDF "text searchable"). You need the full version of Acrobat to do this, or some other program.

PDF for Lawyers: How to highlight PDFs using Adobe's free Reader program