How To Replace Text In Adobe Acrobat Pro 9
Nadia Grubb
Adobe Acrobat Pro updated on my computer recently and ever since then I haven't been able to use the 'Replace selected text' tool by highlighting text and typing over it. Now I'm limited to the more time-consuming approach of highlighting text, right-clicking, and selecting 'Add Note to Replace Text'.
Thanks Akanchha. I'll share this tip with my colleagues -- quite a few people have been caught out by this change and much prefer the old UI. It's much faster for editors to type over text in order to replace it rather than right-click and select the 'Add Note to Replace Text' option each time. Do please consider this for the new UI.
Really? That's the only option? Please say the decision about this has changed since July and you are working on a way to bring back the automatic replace text option. I see I can insert text just by placing my cursor between words and typing. Why can't the replace text tool work the same way?
I have a PDF that needs some significant editing. I can't go back to the source. I could accomplish a lot with a search / replace tool. I've been searching through the help files and information online and I can't figure out if there is a search/replace tool in this product. I have found the search / redact tool, but no search / replace. Does anyone know if Acro Pro 9 has this feature? If not, is there a free plugin that could do this...? and in which version of Acrobat did they introduce search/replace?
No there is no search/replace in any release. PDF is really utterly unsuited to this kind of work. Acrobat is nothing like Word and never will be... if there is any way to get the original, please do that. Otherwise you may need to remake an editable document (e.g. exporting DOC or copy/paste text).
I am a longtime user of Acrobat, but am just trying out Acrobat X and am having a lot of difficulties with the commenting. I am noticing that in order to continually mark changes in the text (using either the replace text or insert text tools) you need to click back on the buttons every single time before writing. In Acrobat 9, you were able to just start writing and your text would automatically replace or insert text where ever your cursor was placed.
Is there a way to get this back again in Acrobat X? Perhaps some preference/or setup option I haven't selected? It's driving me absolutely nuts....
If I want to replace text (instead of just deleting or inserting, I can still do it manually (by highlighting the text I want to change and typing my changes). However, the changes appear in red and blue, which they didn't do before (text was just blue before).
This is not helpful at all. Recipients need to be able to clearly see markups--that is, they should be able to see the original file and the changes the reviewer wants to make to the file. I just re-downloaded DC, and now I'm stuck with this terrible version and wish I had the old vesion back. I use these tools for my job. Not good at all.
Selecting and replacing text DOES NOT WORK ALL THE TIME. Sorry to shout, but it's incredibly annoying. Please reinstate the Replace Text tool. If it doesn't work, I have to delete the text then insert new text - two steps instead of one!
Also, crashing. Since the update, Adobe Reader has been crashing much more often, and also can''t cope with too many changes. I've been working with a 250-page PDF with 300 changes in it., It was taking about 10 seconds for Reader to respond to each change I was making, and about 2 minutes to load the Comments when I opened the file. In the end the file froze and wouldn't let me insert any more changes!
I'm sorry, but I have given up on this version of Adobe reader and found and reinstalled an earlier version that works correctly and does what it is expected to do without having to right click here and there and hope that it works correctly some of the time. I don't have the time to pfaff around with this new version.
Adobe handled this update very badly. The new workflow is good (at least no worse than the old one) but they made no effort to inform people that they'd changed it. All their online help stuff and videos still show the old toolbar and workflow. They also forgot to tell their support people about the change, because when I spoke to them on Friday, they had no idea what I was talking about. Just dumb.
Re: T* tool -- No such thing (AFIK). It's geek-speak for all of the text tools that start with "T" -- the * is a wildcard. Either the hapless support folks are simply repeating what they hear from engineers, or copy-pasting from poorly written internal release notes.
Re: Missing "select and replace text" tool -- the workarounds do replicate the function of the simple, intuitive tool bar icon. Why make something hard when it used to be easy, and then call it an "improvement"?
Re: Missing "select and comment" tool -- Same. One of the support folks (repeating what someone told them) said these two tools are "redundant" because there are different ways to do the same thing.
What Adobe fails to realize (or doesn't care to), is that they are making these functions (the most helpful to writers & editors) MORE difficult for reviewers who do NOT use Adobe every day, and who are very resistant to it. I have been evangelizing for my reviewers to use PDF commenting instead of (ack) Microsoft Word reviewing tools, which they gravitate to by default. Word is a tool they understand and use frequently. Adobe Reader is nothing more than a PDF viewer to them, not the collaboration tool that it can be (and is, among savvy users). Taking away easy features and replacing them with hidden shortcuts is not helping my cause! It is a sure way to keep my reviewers flocking to Word.
Changing the default color of crossed-out text to be replaced from blue to red is unfortunate. Formerly, the blue strikeouts signaled new text, because the teeny, tiny, blue carets are way too easy to miss. If I see a swath of text with red cross-outs, I am likely to just delete it all, unless I'm careful to check the comment panel. Yes, you can change the color back to blue -- but again, I consider this a workaround for a regression bug.
I find it very difficult to get rid of the dragging "hand".After a few seconds of doing nothing it will go, but and when it does eventually go, I cannot place the cursor at a point and move it along a line - there is no cursor.
As for right clicking - your cursor needs to be in the right place - move it over the relevant text till you see a tiny box, *then* right click. This is quite annoying when you've only highlighted one letter for comment/correction.
Another problem I have is that when highlighting in order to add an instruction to the typesetter, the comment box not only doesn't always open, but it is often out of my view in the Comments panel, and I have to scroll around to find it so I can see what I'm typing. This must be a bug.
I'm happy to get used to new functionality but I think we're agreed that this is not an improvement, and not a suite of changes we are happy with. It's a shame this question is marked 'Considered Answered'!
Are you observing the issue with all your files? Could you please explain the steps in which you are observing the issue at along with some sample PDFs and screenshot if possible , so that we may understand it better?
Thanks for trying to help. Below is a screenshot. The highlighted '=' on the left, on double clicking, had a successful opening up of a visible comment box where. However, the highlighted '=' on the right, on double clicking, did not, because the Comments pane 'jumped up' to page 5's comments. Therefore, I have to cursor down (quite a long way, to page 19's comments) to locate the box. Alternatively, I can redo the highlight, and double click again until a comment box opens up in a visible-to-me part of the Comments pane. (The same thing happens regardless of whether I use the highlight tool or right click on the text.) Of course, these were not issues before the change in functionality.
As Andreas points out above, it is of course possible, having highlighted text, to right-click and open a pop-up box. However, this means it now takes two steps to highlight and write an instruction/comment. In previous versions, this could be done in one step. Therefore, in large documents where there are many corrections to make, marking up proofs becomes laborious.
I press insert --> the caret appears in the text --> I assume the box has opened in the Comments pane --> I type the inserted text --> I then cannot locate the correction in the comments pane (because it hasn't appeared)--> I have to undo the insert and redo it until the comment appears. (I was first alerted to this when typesetters queried an insert mark with no text inserted.)
(Of course, I know it's possible to simply place the cursor and start typing to insert. But occasionally I slip back by habit to the old method and it ought to be recorded that it doesn't always work!)
We have tried both the scenarios told by you but still we are not able to see the "Comments Pane scroll itself issue" . If possible , can you record and share it the workflow through Dropbox or any other means? I think it will be more helpful for us to serve you better.
This isn't an acceptable workflow for me either. I need to mark up proofs with changes for my team to implement in InDesign. The new replacement tool doesn't give me a way to alert them to the copy that requires changes. Ug.
Are you still having problems with replacing text? I've found that replace text works if you only highlight one letter or a portion of a word and start typing replacement text, but does NOT work if you highlight the entire word. I'm not sure why that is. An alternative method is to highlight the text you want to replace, move the cursor over the highlighted text until a small page symbol (open rectangle with dog ear)appears, right click, and select 'Add note to Replace text (or type 'r', the underlined letter).
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