Hold down SHIFT to draw straight horizontal or vertical lines.

When the Enable Text Highlighting preference is enabled, you can override it and draw free-form highlights over a text area by holding CTRL while you click and drag.

Additionally, if you click the Highlighter tool outside of a text area and drag it through some text, it will stay in the original free form mode even if Enable Text Highlighting is enabled.

The Enable Text Highlighting preference does not affect the Highlighter tool when it is used on non-text areas, including markups that can have text in them (for example, a Text Box or Callout).

Additionally, double-clicking a word will highlight that word. Under these conditions, when you click and drag over page text, the Highlighter tool will select just the text.

The behavior of the Highlighter tool changes when Enable Text Highlighting is enabled in the Preferences and you are highlighting page text (see the note below).

Click and drag to place a free form line (simulating a pen or pencil) over the desired area.

Select the Highlighter tool using one of the following methods:.

How to remove highlight in pdf