Microsoft Edge offers a PDF highlighter function that highlights PDF text in one of four colors: Light blue, green, yellow, and Pink. You can simply select text from a PDF file and use the right click context menu to highlight that text. Although the functionality works well, you may sometimes experience a problem when you cannot highlight PDF in the Microsoft Edge browser.
Text highlighter does not work in Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge allows you to highlight a PDF with 4 colors. If your Microsoft Edge can’t highlight text in PDF documents in Windows 10, some of these suggestions are sure to help:
- Update the Microsoft Edge browser to the latest version.
- Remove the PDF editing restrictions.
- Check if the PDF is scanned.
- Reset the Microsoft Edge browser settings.
Let’s start with these options one by one.
1]Update Microsoft Edge browser to the latest version
You may be using an older version, which causes the Microsoft Edge highlighter issue to not work. If so, simply update the browser to the latest version.
To do this, open ‘Menu settings and more“From the Edge browser using the shortcut” Alt + F “. You can also click on these three horizontal dots in the upper right corner to open this menu. In this menu, click on the Settings option.
On the Settings page, select About Microsoft Edge option.
Now it will start checking for updates. If updates are available, it will automatically start updating Microsoft Edge. Wait a few seconds.
Once the update is complete, use the To restart button.
When the browser is restarted, open a PDF file and try to highlight it. This should solve the problem. If not, you can try other options.
2]Reset Microsoft Edge browser settings
Sometimes resetting browser settings can also resolve this issue. This option does not erase your saved passwords, history and bookmarks (or favorites). However, you should be careful before using this option as it will reset the default search engine, start page, pinned tabs, new tab page, cookies deleted from Microsoft Edge, etc.
To reset Microsoft Edge settings, open the Settings page using Settings and more menu (Alt + F shortcut) and select Settings option.
On the Settings page of the Edge browser, use the Reset options option.
Click on Restore settings to their default values and the window for resetting the parameters opens. press the Reset button.
Now restart Microsoft Edge, add a PDF file and check if you can highlight PDF. This should solve the problem.
3]Remove PDF editing restrictions
The PDF file you want to highlight may have restrictions or change permissions. In this case, your PDF file becomes read-only. You cannot edit this PDF. You can certainly select text in PDF format, but the highlighting feature of Microsoft Edge will not work when editing content is limited.
If this is the case, you must delete the modification permissions from this PDF. Some free software and services are available to help you remove these permissions / restrictions from a PDF document.
After permissions to edit content are removed, you can highlight PDF using the Microsoft Edge browser.
4]Check if the PDF is scanned
A scanned PDF contains pages as images. When there is a scanned PDF, the text content available in that PDF cannot be copied or highlighted. In this case, you must convert scanned PDF to searchable PDF. Again, there are certain services and software that can help you convert scanned PDF to normal PDF.
When the PDF is converted to a searchable PDF, you can highlight it in the Microsoft Edge browser.
Here are some options that you can try to resolve the issue that the highlighting feature of Microsoft Edge is not working. I hope something helps.
