Highlight, Underline, And Strike Out Text In A PDF Using Preview On Mac

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macOS Tahoe 26 macOS Sequoia 15 macOS Sonoma 14 macOS Ventura 13 macOS Monterey 12 macOS Big Sur 11.0 macOS Catalina 10.15 macOS Mojave 10.14 Select version: macOS Tahoe 26 macOS Sequoia 15 macOS Sonoma 14 macOS Ventura 13 macOS Monterey 12 macOS Big Sur 11.0 macOS Catalina 10.15 macOS Mojave 10.14 Modifying this control will update this page automatically Search this guide Clear Search Table of Contents

Preview User Guide

• Welcome
• Get started
• Open PDFs and images
• View PDFs or images
  • View PDFs and images
  • Find text in PDFs
  • Interact with text in a photo
  • Bookmark PDF pages
  • View information about PDFs and images
  • Import images from a camera
  • See where a photo was taken
  • Display a PDF as a slideshow
  • View an animated GIF’s frames
• Edit PDFs
  • Fill out and sign PDF forms
  • Select and copy text in a PDF
  • Highlight, underline and strike out text
  • Add notes and speech bubbles to a PDF
  • Annotate a PDF
  • Combine PDFs
  • Add, delete or move PDF pages
  • Crop or rotate a PDF
  • Add effects to a PDF
• Edit images
  • Crop, resize or rotate an image
  • Convert image file types
  • Remove a background or extract an image
  • Annotate an image
  • See what an image looks like on another device
  • Apply a colour profile to an image
• Share PDFs or images
• Manage PDFs or images
  • Save PDFs and images
  • Revert changes to PDFs and images
  • Copy PDFs and images
  • Lock PDFs and images
  • Export PDFs and images
  • Password-protect a PDF
  • Reduce the size of a PDF
• Print PDFs and images
• Troubleshooting
  • If you can’t select or copy text in a PDF
  • If images or PDFs aren’t the correct size
  • If Go to Page shows the wrong page of a PDF
• Change Preview settings
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Copyright and trademarks

You can use the highlight, underline and strikethrough text tools to draw attention to text in a PDF. These marks are often used in conjunction with speech bubbles and notes.

Open Preview for me

Highlight, underline or strike though text

1. Go to the Preview app on your Mac.

2. Open the PDF you want to change.

3. Do any of the following:

   • Quickly highlight, underline or strike through text: Select text, click next to , then choose a highlight colour, underline or strikethrough.

   • Use highlight mode: Click (so it turns grey), click next to , then choose a highlight colour, underline or strikethrough. Now, whenever you select some text, the highlighting style you chose is automatically applied to the text.

     To turn off highlighting, click again.

   • Remove a highlight, an underline or a strikethrough: Control-click the text, then choose Remove [item] from the shortcut menu.

View all the highlights in a PDF

1. Go to the Preview app on your Mac.

2. Open the PDF you want to change.

3. Choose View > Highlights and Notes (so Highlights and Notes has a tick next to it). Each section of highlighted text appears in the sidebar.

See alsoAnnotate a PDF in Preview on MacAnnotate an image in Preview on MacFill out and sign PDF forms in Preview on Mac Helpful? Yes No Character limit: 250 Please don’t include any personal information in your comment. Maximum character limit is 250. Submit Thanks for your feedback.