Preview: Can't copy text if it is highlighted.

How is it true??? Highlight some text in a PDF…

then select that same text and right/control click or choose "Copy" from the Edit menu and see if you can "copy" the text.

You have to "Remove Highlight" before the selection can be copied.

I concur with dialabrain, for Preview 10.1 and Mojave 10.14.3 copy and paste of "highlighted" text is broken.

For a pdf with text and highlighting as in the image above:

456 will not copy to the clipboard.

3456 will copy to and paste from the clipboard (if you right click on the 3).

678 will not copy to the clipboard.

Could it be this?

For some reason, Mojave's default highlighting color matches the white color of text documents in Preview. So even though it doesn't look like you're highlighting text, you actually are! Crazy, I know. To fix this, go to System Preferences --> General --> then change the highlighting color to a different color. I did this, and now I can see that I've been highlighting text this whole time. Weird that Apple defaulted the highlighting color like that, but so it goes...

https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/9jmunj/preview_app_cant_select_text_for_copyingpasting/

In the Preview app on your Mac, open the PDF you want to change.

If the Markup toolbar isn’t showing, click the Show Markup Toolbar button , then do any of the following:

Copy text: Click the Text Selection button , drag over the text, then choose Edit > Copy.

Copy a portion of text vertically: Click the Text Selection button , hold down the Option key as you select the text, then choose Edit > Copy. (This is useful for copying a column in a table.)

Copy a portion of the page as a graphic image: Click the Rectangular Selection button , drag over a portion of the page, then choose Edit > Copy.

As a work around: be sure to included in your selection at least 1 character of un-highlighted text _preceeding_ the highlighted text. Then right click on the selected but unhighlighted character to copy.

I posted in the context of Preview 10 on High Sierra. Even said so — because this is a High Sierra community.

I don't disagree with you about Mojave, because the methods in the PDFKit framework that are supposed to return the text of a highlighted string also return nothing. Wrote a PyObjC script that could detect the Highlight, even knew the coordinates for the beginning and ending of the highlight, but the highlighted string itself was null. Tools that do not use Apple's PDFKit apparently can capture the Highlighted string.

Here is what I intended to post, no what the hosting software would allow though before it blocked the post.

I don't disagree with you about Mojave, because the methods in the PDFKit framework that are supposed to return the text of a highlighted string simply return nothing. Wrote a PyObjC script to test that with PDFKit.

However, if one opens the same PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC v2019.010, and do not select the highlighted text — a right-click will produce a secondary menu with a Copy Text menu item that correctly places the highlighted text on the clipboard. Clearly throws shade on Apple's Preview and its underlying dependency on PDFKit.

I posted in the context of Preview 10 on High Sierra. Even said so — because this is a High Sierra community.

Yes, you did say that. However I get the same results in High Sierra so I didn't make mention of the fact.

FWIW, Apple is not here. This is a users for users forum and we have no insight as to what Apple may or may not be fixing.

You can send Apple feedback: Feedback - macOS - Apple

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FWIW, it's not that. It's true that in Preview you can't copy text that has had highlighting added.

How is that true? I just copied and pasted some highlighted text from Preview 10.0 on High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G5019) into another document, and the Terminal.

Indeed.