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Highlight without OCR

dmitrou
Registered: Dec 14 2007
Posts: 2

Is it possible to use a "highlight" feature in Acrobat Standard (or professional) without sending a scanned document through OCR? I review hundreds, and at times thousands, of pages of medical records with terrible doctor's handwriting, making OCR impractical because of the size of the files and the style of material. We used to use "E-Copy" which had a feature to highlight any portion of any scanned document. Acrobat Standard has a highlight feature, but it asks me to OCR the document to create text every time I want to highlight? With all of the comment and edit features, I find it hard to believe there is no way to highlight a portion of a non-ocr .pdf. Thanks.

My Product Information:
Acrobat Standard 8, Windows
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
Hi dmitrou,

Without OCRing the PDF you won't be able to use the Text markup tools (or search for that matter) but you can use some of the other markup tools. For example you can use the Rectangle tool to draw a rectangle around a given area and then change the Properties so it looks like a highlighter. To do this select the annotation Properties, change the fill color to yellow and reduce the opacity. You'll probably also want to make the these properties the default by checking the "Make Properties Default" box.

Hope this helps,
Lori

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.