Changing font color in text box

If you're talking about the Commenting Text Box tool, open the Properties Bar (right click on the Toolbar Well and select Properties Bar from the context menu). In the Properties Bar you can change the font attributes including font color.

I know this is absurd. We should have the font color default to black and not red and we should be able to change color in the Properties dialog box too. You might send the people at Adobe a note on how you'd like to see this changed in the next relase of Acrobat.

ted

Hi xrez,

Bring up the Properties bar (Ctrl-E), select the text in the textbox and use the options on the Properties bar to change the color of the selected text.

Hope that helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
[url=http://www.windjack.com]www.windjack.com[/url]

Thanks it works now. But as Ted says, it is a little bit cumbersome and these settings should be in the properties of the text box

After reading the many questions on this issue, and trying to follow the answers, I'm just not getting it. What's strange is that sometimes I'm able to change text colors in a text box, sometimes not, that's strange.

Here's what happens: I'm running Acrobat Professional 8.1.1 on Window XP. I typically create a text box comment by clicking on the text box icon in the Comment & markup toolbar. I must assume that this, in fact, is a "Commenting Text Box" as mentioned above by Mr. Padova. Note: if that sounds like I have not used the "Commenting Text Box" then please tell me (us). On Mr. Padova's blog (http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/tedpadova/2007/03/15/changing-font-colors-in-comment-text-boxes/), he responds to the issue with "Are you working with a Text Box Comment?" What other text boxes are there - besides the Callout? I'm pretty sure that everyone who's asked about this is talking about the Text Box tool. If not, please elaborate on the common misconceptions regarding what is and what is not a text box.I have the properties bar open as well via CTRL-E.

According to Dimitri's answer to xrez above, I should now select the red text and the Properties toolbar should (I assume) change from the "No current selection" message to icons or similar indicating changes to font, font size, font color, etc.

Well, after selecting the text, the Properties bar still only has the "No current selection" message displayed.

There just doesn't seem to be a way to get the Properties bar to behave in the successful manner you're describing. At least on my computer. I looked at the Edit>Preferences>Commenting and there wasn't a thing that looked relevant to this issue.What could be the problem? Is it an installation issue (i.e., did something just not get installed properly?). Is there some magical check box, somewhere that's got to be checked? What???

NOW HERE'S THE BIG ISSUE: I've created two .pdf documents. One from Excel 2003, one from PowerPoint 2003. It's the one from Excel that doesn't want to change the Properties bar... I wonder why this is? So, I checked the Adobe PDF>Change Conversion Settings in both applications. There's no difference in settings, though there are things relevant to Excel and not PowerPoint, like "Fit worksheet to a single page" and vice-versa. However, I prefer to create .pdfs from the File>Print menu. So, I checked the print settings for each. There's no difference, either.BUT... I'm one of those "never give up" types... And there's more than one way to skin a cat. Plus, coming from a Mac background (mac at home, windows at work), I think outside the box.

Thusly, with the .pdf created from PowerPoint still open, I closed the .pdf from Excel. Then I reopened the Excel-created .pdf and what do you know?! The Properties bar is acting like it's been described above!!! I can change my text box text attributes (like color) as I would have expected!!!

Any replies are appreciated, thank you.

I think that there may be an [b]actual bug[/b] in Acrobat that causes the properties bar to say "no current selection" even when something (say, text inside a text box) is selected. I found, in Acrobat 8, that sometimes after I in fact select text in a text box and hit Ctrl-E, the properties bar says "no current selection."

I solved this by closing all instances of Acrobat, [i]including an instance embedded in a browser window,[/i] and reopening the document. The bug disappeared. I am guessing that Acrobat gets confused when it's simultaneously open in a browser window (where the functionality is limited) and a program window.

This is a common problem that I've seen asked, but never solved, on several websites. I hope this helps.

I use Acrobat 9 Pro with Windows XP. I cannot seem to change the font color from red to black in a text box. It seems that if I choose to add a text box while editing a form, I can change the color without problems; otherwise, if I choose to enter a textbox from the Comments menu, the text is red and there's no way to change the color or font size, only the font's characteristics such as bold, italics, underline, etc. Please help. This is driving me absolutely beserk!

To change the text color from red to black ... you need to be in Text Box/Commenting Box edit mode (go figure).

Double click on the object to get into edit mode, type CTRL-A to select all, and CTRL-E to bring up the "Text Box Text Properties" ... VOILE, you can change the font color, the font type, the size, alignment.

This doesn't seem to work for me. No matter how I click on the text box and select the text, the properties bar is still grayed out.

I have had problems similar to some of those described above. Sometimes ctrl + e brings up the text box text properties bar, and sometimes it doesn't. I am using Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1.0.

A simple solution that has worked for me is to take the text into another program (Word, Outlook, etc.), reformat it in the other program, then paste it back into the text box. This seems to work consistently to change size, color, italics, etc. If you have just a small amount of text in the desired format, you can place the cursor inside the properly formatted area, type the desired text (which will be in the format of the surrounding text), then delete any extra characters. This is more trouble than it should be - but it seems to work!

Restarting Acrobat is probably the best resolution to the issue at this point.

Acrobat Pro 8.1.6 on Mac OSX. I am able to change the font/color if I can select the text in the text box, but not the Text Box itself. Using the text box properties tool bar (command e on a Mac) Haven't figured out a reproducible series of clicking/selecting that gets be the text and not the text box. I manage to do it at random, but I don't see the pattern.

The Ctrl-E is the quickest option and it works. Thanks for sharing.

I'm using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, so hopefully this response will be relevant.

In your file, click Ctrl + E to open the properties bar. Double click inside your text box, which will make the Text Color setting appear on the Properties Bar.

Highlight the text in your text box, and change the text color on the Properties Bar.

In order to make this your default color, click outside the text box, then click on it to select it.
Right click, and choose "Make Current Properties Default".

Hope that helps!

DaveNR you rock.
You solved the problem I've been having after I print to PDF.
Now I just close that document and reopen and Voila!
The ctrl-E thing works, the Text Box Properties thing works, in fact everything works as it should. Moral: close printed PDF and reopen! Easy peasy... Happy girl :-)

This bug is actually really annoying. I have asked our IT to reinstalled Acrobat 6 because I am tired of dealing with it. Is there any plan to fix this bug?

Just as clarification, two things changed for in Acrobat 8 relating to this issue. First the text box tool is now context sensitive (version 8 and later) and second the multiple document interface (MDI) was dropped in Acrobat 9. This means that how the toolbars behave when you have multiple documents open has changed. With MDI, all the document windows resided under the same parent application -- so you saw more consistency with the toolbar behavior. For more information on the differences between MDI and SDI (Single Document Interface) check out the following [url=http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/2008/09/mdi_vs_sdi_in_acrobat.php]blog entry[/url].

I couldn't agree more with davem! This bug is irritating and silly.

I frequently am highlighting and adding bubble comments and adding textboxes to a PDF file when suddenly I am no longer able to change the properties of the highlighting color or the text color/size in textboxes. It's not "easy" to just close all PDF documents because I'm doing research that requires me to have several PDFs open simultaneously, and, each is zoomed and paged to a specific location. Even if I have to close just ONE of the PDFs, I then have to reload find and reload the PDF (though I can use the MRUFs, but that requires restarting Acrobat separately from the other open docs), find my location in the PDF, readjust the zoom, etc. That's just plain annoying and I have to do it several times every hour which translates to many, many times each day.

BTW, I'm using Acrobat Pro version 9 with the latest updates just installed yesterday--this bug has existed from the start and isn't going away, so, I thought I'd join the outcry to beg for a fix!

I'd be VERY, VERY grateful if the folks at Adobe looked into to fixing this problem--it seems so basic!