The text select function appears to not work in preview of pdf documents after upgrading to High Sierra.
Area select still works, the pdf is not password protected and it is not an image based pdf. I think it's a bug, any help out there?
Cheers, Hans
MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014), macOS High Sierra (10.13.1)
Before High Sierra, if it was an image based PDF, then the text selector would highlight the entire document now it just shows the mouse pointer arrow as if there's nothing to select. The MS Excel output hasn't changed so it must be on the Mac OS side. Anyway, a fix would be great but I'm now printing to a PDF printer, which is just another two clicks extra. Life goes on...
Thanks for your thoughts.
Before High Sierra, if it was an image based PDF, then the text selector would highlight the entire document now it just shows the mouse pointer arrow as if there's nothing to select. The MS Excel output hasn't changed so it must be on the Mac OS side. Anyway, a fix would be great but I'm now printing to a PDF printer, which is just another two clicks extra. Life goes on...
Thanks for your thoughts.
I also have this problem with preview application. It is not about all PDF files, but some can not be selected the text and highlight it. File is not encrypted, content is not photo, text.
In fact, I can open this file with Adobe Reader and I can use the text part but I can not use it with preview.
The file is not a file I created with a program such as excel, but a chapter I downloaded from the journal site.
I share one of the files I mentioned about your experiment with you: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L5Ywfdr_Kd0uTOEGGSWPvziykMqU7lcj/view?usp=shari ng
I found a temporary solution to this problem. But that does not mean that this problem has been removed.
After I open the file with preview, I commant printing by pressing cmd + P and save it as a new pdf file from this window. The new file that i created in this way is now has selectable and highlitable text.
Selecting text in the Preview app works. If you mean selecting text in QuickLook it does not.
In addition, I just noticed that this affects PDFs created by MS Excel by using the "Save as PDF" function. Other PDFs appear unaffected
Thanks, I do mean the Preview, not the QuickLook. Problem appears to be the source of the PDF document. Texts opened in the affected PDFs in Acrobat reader have no problem being selected.
You're welcome. I don't have MS Excel so I can't check. But if it's only PDFs created by MS Excel… It's not creating an image first then saving it as a PDF by any chance?
Thanks Niedy707, I downloaded the pdf and preview did not allow me to select text. The pdf permissions however do allow for that so I still think this is a Preview bug.
Cheers, Hans
pdf text select in preview not working after High Sierra upgrade
