EdwinWYZ Author

Level 1

6 points

Can't turn off annotate in Preview

Hi,

I encountered a bug when using Preview to view pdf files. It can be reproduced with following steps:

open a pdf file by Preview.
select tools->Annotate->Highlight Text in menu bar.
select some texts in the pdf document. (texts are highlighted)
select tools->Text Selection to turn off annotate.
select some texts in the pdf document. (texts selected are still highlighted!!!)

I know there is a way to turn off annotate. Basically I need to click the "highlight" icon twice, which is utterly inconvenient.

Is there any fix to make this software do what it's supposed to do?

Thanks for your attention

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 12.2

Posted on Mar 3, 2022 4:55 PM

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Top-ranking reply

Level 9

74,136 points

Posted on Mar 4, 2022 12:40 AM

As far as I can tell, it is working as designed: you check highlight, it is active.

I suggest a quicker approach that will not keep highlight turned on:

Select text, press Command-control-H

This will only highlight that text, and will not affect subsequent selections; and is much quicker, too.

FWIW, there are similar shortcuts for other markup features.

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6 replies

Top-ranking reply

Level 9

74,136 points

Mar 4, 2022 12:40 AM in response to EdwinWYZ

As far as I can tell, it is working as designed: you check highlight, it is active.

I suggest a quicker approach that will not keep highlight turned on:

Select text, press Command-control-H

This will only highlight that text, and will not affect subsequent selections; and is much quicker, too.

FWIW, there are similar shortcuts for other markup features.

Reply

Level 7

21,069 points

Mar 3, 2022 5:01 PM in response to EdwinWYZ

Control click the highlighted section and Remove Highlight.

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EdwinWYZ Author

Level 1

6 points

Mar 3, 2022 5:12 PM in response to picas

This removes the highlighted texts. But my questions is how to close the annotate function when selecting new texts.

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Level 7

21,069 points

Mar 3, 2022 5:26 PM in response to EdwinWYZ

So you highlight text, but when you select some other text it is also automatically highlighted?

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EdwinWYZ Author

Level 1

6 points

Mar 3, 2022 7:40 PM in response to picas

No, I mean once I turn on the annotate (such text highlighting), I can't turn it off by selecting "text selection" in the menu.

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EdwinWYZ Author

Level 1

6 points

Mar 4, 2022 2:45 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks for reply. Yes, that's a work around.

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Can't turn off annotate in Preview

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