Printing highlighted text

Not an easy task. You will have to use JavaScript to create the report but since you want the text uncer the hightlight you will not only need to find the highlights, easy enough using the anntoation type, but you will will have to use JavaScript to retrieve each word and see if it in within the quads for the highlighted text.

Whew! and double whew! Learning Java wasn't on my ToDo list... mmmmm... I think I'll try putting my 7.1 highlighted pdf files on a usb drive and plugging it into a spare laptop that has Acrobat 5.0 installed and printing from there.

Its a bit of a kludge, and I suppose there could be backward compatibility issues, but time is short and it just might work. Meantime I'm sending a copy of this thread to the U.S. Dept. of Forestry ;-)

... thanks again.

Aggregating comments to support reduced paper use for hardcopy reports.

Highlights are just another "comment/markup" variation, so...

Create PDF of Comment Summary.
The resultant report's contents reflect a tabular layout.
In effect, a table. Use the Table Select tool to save each page's
"table" to a *.csv file.
Some minor manipulations, through your spreadsheet application,
will yield a file with the comments aggregated.
The resultant file, when printed to hardcopy, will have a reduced page count.

Seems ok for short docs, but in longer docs, going page by page, if I understand your procedure, and copying each time to a *.cvs file has the same effect as a review of each page would. Keeping in mind that we're talking about long, long 100+ page docs, My test doc, for example has 152 highlights in a 304 pp. doc. I'm not seeing where any time or effort is saved. On the other hand, I can see where some paper is saved, and that's always a good thing. Paper... time... paper... time, what to do? What to do???

Appears the you have a "must use paper" scenerio...

You are correct about the *.csv files. The time invested yields the shorter, paper saving, hard copy report. While more time is used, do not overlook the significant "hidden cost" savings realized by less paper reproduction and less handling by someone. The hidden costs add up dramatically if reproducing larger volumes of paper. University sites often identify the real cost of reproduction and handling (as does a USN excel file out there) if you want hard numbers.

With that said, a change to usage of the PDF comments file would, long term,
solve both "paper" and "time" issues.

Be well...

This problem has been nagging me forever as well!! Not particualrly good product design on Adobe's part. Any fixes to this?

Thanks
JIM

Write your own report using JavaScript. [url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]Acrobat JavaScript Reference[/url]. See the example under the "writeText" method of the "Report" object.

Thanks. But I cannot find what you are refering to. That webpage has copious sections.

Does anyone have any solutions to these problems other than writing custom JS? I find it hard to believe Adobe has not accounted for these report user preferences and these comment requests seem to abound on this board.....

[edited: new version, got rid of a bug, 2008-06-18, sorry...]

I had a similar problem: copying the text of all annotations in a document to the comment of the annotations in order to parse the xfdf-output into a database.
The script below (saved as folder level script) basically walks through all quads of every annotation in the document and copies whatever text lies inside the annot-quads to the annot-comment. Not exactly elegant, not exactly fast, tested on a few of my own documents but nowhere else. For me this is a one-time thing and for this it seams to work just fine. All future documents are created with the option "Copy selected text into Highlight, ..."). Have fun and post if you optimize it:

//save this in ~/Library/Acrobat User Data/8.0_x86/JavaScripts/config.js

app.addMenuItem({cName:"Copy Text to Annotation Comment", cParent:"Document", cExec:"getComments(this);"});

function getComments (doc) {
for (var p=0; p=Math.round(q[0])
&& Math.round(pq[2])<=Math.round(q[2]))
qtext += doc.getPageNthWord (p, n, false);
};
};//write qtext back to the annotation

a.contents = qtext.replace ("\n", "");

};
};
};
}

Thx! for the JS work around.
Looks like it worked partially. I got 'internal error' - so the highlights in the first few pages are printed - I guess since the error occured - the rest of the pages are blanks

I have 7.0 and saved the config.js file in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\Javascripts folder

Any help?
TIA,
AK

Missed on pasting this error I get to see in the Javascript Console
TypeError: qs has no properties
19:Folder-Level:App:Config.js

Hi,
There were some annotations(insert annotations) in the PDF Comment List that looked abnormal - took them off and the script worked like a charm!
Thanks,
AK

Since this post took off on a road to javaland and my efforts to follow it didn't work, I'll go back to asking whether or not Acrobat 9 offers a simple, ready-made resolution, ie. in 9, can highlighted text be replicated in a report that doesn't involve a lot of trees, like vers. 4 & 5 could do?

Hello all,

Re. the original message on this thread, I'm wondering if Adobe has changed the way highlights and comments are reported in Acrobat 8 or 9 vs. my difficulties with Acrobat 7 reporting. Tks...

Acrobat 9 creates Comment Summaries similar to the way Acrobat 8 does -- so a few trees are still involved. There are a few pre-configured [url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/batch_sequences.pdf]batch sequences[/url] that may help you in your endeavor. There are two examples listed hat might help, Summarize Comments from Documents (I'm not sure if this creates individuals pages) and/or Write Comments to Tab/Delimited file.

I am trying to print a pdf file that I have marked up using the yellow highlight tool. I have tried a variety of useless things because each time I print, the yellow hightlight that is on the screen in NOT in the printed document.
I'm using Acrobat 8.0 on an iMac with 10.6.7

How to in Windows. Ought to be similar, if not the same, on the Mac.
With a PDF open in Acrobat — open the print dialog (File : Print).
Observe "Comments and Forms:" in the upper right.
A drop down menu is under this. Select "Document and Markups" which sends the PDF page content and the Comments & Markup annotations to the printer. Keep in mind that the yellow highlight annotation, if printed without color, may mask the text underneath. How much will be determined by what you set for the highlight opacity. Printing with color may mitigate this; or, reduce the opacity of the highlight.
.

Mac is a touch different with a "Comments and Forms" drop down menu in the middle left of the Print command window. I selected Document and Markups (as opposed to the default Document) and the document highlights printed JUST FINE! The highlights also appeared in the "Preview: Composite" window within the Print command box.
Thanks VERY MUCH.

Folks, this is not about the highlighting itself. In fact, I'm not looking for the highlighting, just the text that was highlighted. In, say... Acrobat 5, I could highlight a sentence on each of 4 pages, and then print comments and get one page with 4 sentences, not highlighted sentences, just the four sentences. I know this cannot be done in 7, probably not in 8, and in 9, which I use currently, it is unavailable. But in can be done easily in 4 & 5. Ah well, there's no pleasing everyone. Thanks for the comments.

The report generated by Acrobat includes the contents of the highlight, NOT the highlighted text underneath it.
If you want the two to be the same you have two options:
1. Check the box to include the highlighted text in the annotations BEFORE making the highlights ("Copy selected text into Highlight, Cross-Out, and Underline comment pop ups" under Edit - Preferences - Commenting).
2. If you've already created your highlights with this option disabled, you can use this script, created by me, to retroactively copy the text into the comments:
http://try67.blogspot.com/2011/04/acrobat-retroactively-copy-selected.php