saving highlights from pdf in Preview

No Apple application, including Preview, will allow you to scrape annotations off of the PDF document into another document. However, the Skim PDF reader has a facility to convert Preview PDF annotations to Skim Notes. Once you have done that you can export the Skim notes separately as a text or RTF file.

If you had originally used Skim to add Highlights, then these are simply ready to export per the first paragraph.

Make a copy of your PDF, before opening in Skim.

Hi Doug,

I'm not quite sure what you are asking.

Do you want to save a copy of the file with the highlighted parts retaining the highlighting?

If so, try saving a copy of the file, using Save As…

(File menu > press and hold option, select Save As…)

Edit the filename or change the location to avoid overwriting the existing file.

OR do you want to extract the Highlighted parts to a second document, then save that 'list' of the highlighted parts?

If so, try copying the individual parts, pasting them (individually) into a new Pages document. Save.

OR press shift-control-command-4 to change the mouse pointer to a crosshairs,

Drag the crosshairs to create a selection rectangle enclosing the highlighted part, then release the mouse button to copy the enclosed area to the Clipboard as a png image. Paste the image into a Pages document.

Repeat as needed, then edit and save the Pages document.

Regards,

Barry

Hi Doug,

I see no way of extracting the highlights as text that can be pasted to a different document.

You can, though, use View (menu) > Highlights and Notes to get a list of the highlighted text selections in the left sidebar.

These can't be selected and copied as text, but you can make the sidebar wider, then take a screen shot (or in your 200 page case, more likely a series of screen shots, and paste or insert those into a document of your choosing.

Copy (screen shot) of resulting list:

Screen shot to file on Desktop:

Place pointer at top left corner of area you want in the shot.

Press shift-command-4. (Pointer changes to crosshair)

Drag pointer to botom right corner of area to capture, then release mouse button.

File is automatically saved to the desktop with the name "Screen shot date and time stamp "

Screen shot to Clipboard:

Same instructions, but press shift-control-command-4.

Regards,

Barry

PS: Adobe Acrobat may offer a means of selecting and copying all highlighted text. If so, information would be available on Adobe's website.

B