Adobe creates some of the most powerful tools, they are often very complex as well. This complexity can sometimes make even the simplest tasks seem daunting.

Not being able to adjust the settings to your preferences, changing the highlight color for example, can lead to frustration when using software like Adobe Acrobat. This article will help you learn how to change the highlight color quickly and easily with several different methods.

What Is Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Acrobat is an application created to view and interact with PDF files. It is primarily used to view PDF files whether the user is connected to the internet or not, but it can also be used to edit and manage PDFs. It can even be used to create new PDF files from scratch.

Just like most other Adobe products, Adobe Acrobat is considered one of the premier tools available for its purpose. However, Adobe applications and software suites are also known to be highly complex and often complicated to use effectively.

Why Change the Highlight Color in Adobe Acrobat?

While everyone that changes the highlight color in Adobe Acrobat will certainly do so for the reasons that suit them best, below are some of the more common ones. You may even find that they offer additional benefits you may potentially be looking for.

1. Personal Preference

The most common reason that users want to change the highlight color in Adobe Acrobat is simply to suit their tastes. Color preference can play a significant role for many individuals, particularly if Adobe Acrobat is used consistently and often. If you spend a large portion of time highlighting text, or reading text that has been highlighted, having it highlighted in a color you prefer can be much easier on the eyes.

2. Readability For Yourself

Improving the readability of documents that you need to study or review can be made much easier by selecting different colors for different needs. This can be invaluable for quickly marking important headings, paragraphs, statistics, and more, increasing the speed of referencing the information later.

Improving readability is one reason that knowing how to change the highlight color in Adobe Acrobat is so essential to students, researchers, professionals, and others who deal with complex documents routinely.

3. Improved Readability for Others

If you are the one creating documents, but you have many others reading them, knowing how to change the highlight color in Adobe Acrobat can boost the readability of your documents. Alternating colors, or coordinating colors to draw the reader’s attention to specific data can be a powerful presentation technique.

This becomes a force multiplier when dealing with subjects that are often considered, dry, boring, or otherwise tedious. By helping the reader to get the most value out of the time they spend reading, they are more likely to have a positive experience.

4. Collaboration

If you work or learn in an environment where collaboration is possible or even necessary, being able to change the highlighter color is a crucial feature. When multiple people may be reviewing a document simultaneously, viewing content, and potentially commenting within the file, color-coding sections for delegation can reduce stress and wasted time.

Particularly when it concerns large or complex documents, color-coding can save time for those reading by helping to draw their attention to the precise text that needs to be reviewed. By knowing how to quickly and easily change the highlight color in Adobe Acrobat, team leaders or organizers can easily tell contributors which color they are responsible for and help them navigate to the location.

Ongoing Benefits of Learning How to Change the Highlighting Color

For many people, the benefits of learning how to change the highlighting color in Adobe Acrobat mean that they have learned a new feature and can use their software more effectively and efficiently. For many others, such as those who manage or supervise teams, the benefits can be cascaded to team members, making them more skilled overall.

Changing The Highlight Color

When it comes to changing the highlight color in Adobe Acrobat, you may be surprised to learn that there are several different methods that can be used at almost any time. Not only will the process for changing the highlight color differ for each method, but will also differ based on what platform you are using to run Adobe Acrobat.

Four general ways can be used to alter the color used for highlighting; they are:

• Changing the highlight color for existing text
• Changing the color of the highlight while creating in real-time
• Changing the highlight color while in comment mode
• Changing the highlight color when running Adobe Acrobat on a mobile platform
  

Each method will have a unique process, and may also offer you additional benefits of time-saving or efficiency. They are applicable in different situations and may offer new advantages or benefits over other methods. Let’s take a look at the details of each, and what exactly is needed to change the color of the highlighter.

Change Your Highlight for Rendered Text

This is the most common method of changing the highlighter color and will work on any text that has been incorporated into a PDF and rendered for display or printing.

1. Locate the text you need to be highlighted, then select that text in the document.
2. Once the text has been selected, there will be a drop-down menu available with the highlight button, click that button.
3. The text will now be highlighted though not in the color you would like, so right-click on the highlighted text and choose “Properties” from the context menu.
4. Now the “Highlight Properties” window should be visible, ensure you are clicked onto the “Appearance” tab.
5. The “Appearance” tab will give you access to a full color-picker interface, as well as opacity settings, and the ability to make the new color choice the default color going forward.
6. Once you have the color set the way you would like, as well as the other available options, click “OK” to save your new configuration.

Highlight Color Changes in Real-Time

This method is one of the best choices for quick changes between highlighting colors that don’t need to be made default. This is a great technique for students who are skimming material and highlighting with alternating colors.

1. Select the text you need to highlight.
2. Open your “Highlighter Tool Properties” floating menu with the hotkey Ctrl+E, and move it to a convenient location.
3. The color option will be the leftmost button, and it will give a dropdown of common colors as well as an option to open the interface to pick a specific color by dropper or hex.
4. There will be 5 preset opacity settings should you need them.
5. The changes are made in real-time, so there is no need to click any further confirmations.

Changes To Highlight Color in Comment Mode

This method is the perfect solution to both draw attention to selected text, and subsequently, open it up for commentary or suggestions. This is a powerful collaborative tool that many people aren’t even aware of.

1. Start by opening the document for comments via “Comment Mode” by navigating to the “View” menu, “Tools” submenu, hovering over “Comment” and then selecting “Open”.
2. This will open the additional tool panel, with an option for “Color” that includes an opacity slider as well.
3. This will maintain the selected color settings until otherwise changed by you.

Highlight Color Changes in Acrobat Mobile

Features on mobile versions tend to be a little different due to the translation across operating systems. The Adobe Acrobat app, however, maintains a relatively similar process to the rendered text method for PC. The only difference is that the input needs to be adapted to the mobile OS being used, take a look.

1. Just as with PC methods, you will need to select the text you want to highlight, often this is done with a long press followed by drag-adjusting the selection area.
2. Once the text has been selected, on both Android and iOS the app should automatically make available the context menu containing the color and opacity selection.
3. Whatever settings are chosen will automatically be retained for additional highlighting until changed again.

Wrapping Up

While you certainly could use just one particular method for nearly all of your highlighting, you will likely find increased benefits in having the versatility of being able to alter the coloration in multiple ways. You may also notice that you are finding Adobe Acrobat more enriching overall, by using the various techniques to engage your readers, using it to study and browse more effectively, or even promote more interactive and lively discussion among team members in your organization.

Not only will the process become quicker and easier as you get used to using it, but you can increase the speed and efficiency by using the Ctrl+E hotkey to toggle the persistent color window. When it comes down to it, changing the highlight color in Adobe Acrobat, whether you are using the desktop or mobile version, is easy and fast.