I;m runin Ventura on a 2021 MacBook Pro. In preview when I hit highlight and select a color adn then try to highlight text, it does not work. I then tried to go to "text selection" and clicked on it and then hit the highlight tool, same thing. I can't copy and paste either. This has been a reoccurring problem for at least 2 months now. What happened? Why doesn't this work?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 13.6
A scanned PDF will be a PDF container encapsulating image data and would repulse any effort to apply annotations. Once the PDF has received optical character recognition (OCR) to produce a text layer in registration with the image text, then you can apply annotations to that OCR text layer. You will need scanning software that can automatically OCR during the PDF generation (e.g. VueScan Professional), or a third-party PDF Editor that offers this feature.
Otherwise, what you describe sounds like an ordinary PDF with user restrictions blocking annotation and content accessibility. I would expect it to produce warning dialogs in response, though you haven't mentioned it.
jk595090 wrote:
I;m runin Ventura on a 2021 MacBook Pro. In preview when I hit highlight and select a color adn then try to highlight text, it does not work. I then tried to go to "text selection" and clicked on it and then hit the highlight tool, same thing. I can't copy and paste either. This has been a reoccurring problem for at least 2 months now. What happened? Why doesn't this work?
The two links below should provide the necessary details for highlighting and colouring test plus text selection
Highlight, underline, and strike out text in a PDF using Preview on Mac
Select and copy text in a PDF in Preview on Mac
As always the current version of Ventura is 13.6.7 incase it has not already been updated
About the security content of macOS Ventura 13.6.7
Preview will not select text or highlight
