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User profile for user: El Deanio
El Deanio Author
User level: Level 3
806 points

PREVIEW: line and highlighter pen tools faulty

My Preview App is misbehaving.


The Highlighter pen tool doesn’t work at all. It just throws up a blue shade covering the whole page.


Using the ‘Sketch' tool, the left pointing arrow in the line selector disappears. The other lines are all okay, including the line with arrow heads at both ends.

Is there a corrupted .plist file I need to delete to restore these functions? I would have deleted Preview.app in my Applications folder then re-downloaded it from the App Store but I can’t seem to find it there for so reason.


BTW, the ‘About’ info. says it is version 11.0 (999.4), Copyright 2002 - 2019. So I’m wondering if it has somehow missed some updates? If so, how do I correct this situation?


iMac 27″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 18, 2021 11:52 AM

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User profile for user: Barney-15E
Barney-15E
User level: Level 10
116,770 points

Posted on Jun 19, 2021 8:21 AM

I don't think I have ever seen a problem with the arrows, short of leaving the line style set to nil, but that doesn't appear to be the problem. I do use the arrows, but I'm not sure if I ever switched ends. I just move the end of the arrow around. I don't have a way to test it on Catalina.


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User profile for user: Barney-15E
Barney-15E
User level: Level 10
116,770 points

Jun 19, 2021 6:58 AM in response to El Deanio

How did you turn that screen shot of a message app into text?

Often, documents like that, will be created with blocks of text that are in no way continuous in the flow you envision they will be.

So, it is possible that as you highlight across one block thinking it will extend to the next one, it is jumping all the way back to the top or bottom of the document because that is where the next text block flows.


You might be better off putting a rectangle around what you want to highlight.

I would have deleted Preview.app in my Applications folder then re-downloaded it from the App Store but I can’t seem to find it there for so reason.

Apps cannot be modified, and no configuration data is store in them, so deleting it and reinstalling will never fix anything.

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User profile for user: El Deanio
El Deanio Author
User level: Level 3
806 points

Jun 19, 2021 8:12 AM in response to Barney-15E

Hi Barney-15E. Thank you for your reply.


The screenshot was taken of the page I happened to be looking at at the time using Screenshot App's 'Record Selected Portion' option in the Dock.


In Preview, the Markup tool called 'Sketch' doesn't work correctly when selecting the "left arrow" option. The drawn line just disappears. Right arrow, arrow heads both ends of a line, line shadow, broken line and so on all appear to be unaffected by this.


Yes, I did end up putting a rectangle around the text and using the Opacity settings, colour etc. for both the line and fill for highlighting until just a moment ago (literally) when I found the solution to the Highlighter pen problem. I found that I just needed to select the text I wanted to highlight using the 'Text Selection' button marked as Aa{ (at the far left on the Markup Tools bar) first and then rolling over the text with the Highlight pen tool selected. I hadn't noticed the Test Selection tool up until now.


To sum up, I think I simply needed to get Preview to first recognise all the text (OCR) in a document before using the highlighter option. So all I need know now is why the left facing arrow at the end of a line doesn't work and, if possible, how to fix/work around it.


I'm curious. If YOU draw a line in Preview using the 'Sketch' tool, then select the left facing arrow in the 'Shapes Style' drop down box, do you get an arrow head drawn on the left hand end of your line? Or does your line disappear like mine does?

.

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User profile for user: El Deanio
El Deanio Author
User level: Level 3
806 points

Jun 19, 2021 8:43 AM in response to Barney-15E

I hadn't thought of that - just moving the end around! I assumed there would be a constraint. As there is a left end and right end option, it didn't occur to me that the two options would be pretty much extraneous to requirements.


Whoopee do! I do think you may have nailed it for me.


Mind if I ask you what version of Preview yours is?

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PREVIEW: line and highlighter pen tools faulty

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