3 Easy Ways to Remove Highlight in PDF

When creating a PDF document, we often use highlights and other annotation tools to emphasize certain sections. However, before finalizing your draft, it’s advisable to remove all highlights in the PDF to maintain a professional appearance.

Whether you want to remove the highlights from individual words or an entire paragraph, we’ll show you how to do this using PDFgear and Adobe Acrobat.

How to Remove All Highlights in PDF for Free Using PDFgear

PDFgear Desktop is the top solution for removing or extracting highlights from PDFs because it’s not only completely free but also full-featured. You can also use it to extract text from PDF images and change font or font size in PDFs.

Although PDFgear Desktop is free, it is in no way inferior to other expensive PDF editors on the market. Before we start, download and install PDFgear Desktop on your Mac or Windows device to experience all its advanced features.

Step 1. Open your PDF in PDF highlight remover

Launch PDFgear on your Mac or PC. Click “Open File” to choose the PDF you want to edit.

Locate the “Annotation” button in the top-left corner to see all highlights.

Step 2. Remove highlights from the PDF

Find the annotated content and click the trash symbol icon to delete the highlights.

Alternatively, right-click the highlighted text and select “Delete” to remove the highlights.

Step 3. Save your PDF

After removing highlights, make any additional edits like add and edit the PDF text. Click “Save as” button in the upper left corner to save your new document free of highlights

How to Unhighlight in PDF Online for Free

If you prefer not to download third-party software to your device, PDFgear’s online PDF editor is a highly effective option for considering the removal of all highlights in a PDF. In addition to unhighlighting PDF text, you can also perform other edits such as adding free text, inserting digital signatures, and adding stamps to your PDF.

With no email address required for registration and no limitations, you can easily remove highlights from PDF text in just three simple steps.

Step 1. Upload a PDF to remove highlight

Open your web browser and visit the PDFgear online PDF editor. Click “Choose Files” to import the PDF you want to remove highlights from.

On a successful open, you’ll be directed to the PDF editor page.

Step 2. Remove highlights in PDF online

Since your document already has highlights, locate the “Comment Panel” button under the “Add or Edit Annotations” tab in the top-right corner. This opens a list of comments on the right, showing all annotations in the PDF.

Find the comment containing the highlighted content and click the “Three-Dotted” icon at the top-right of the comment. Choose “Delete” from the options to remove the highlight from the PDF.

Alternatively, you can right-click the highlighted text and select “Clear” from the options to remove the highlight.

Step 3. Download the new file without highlight

Once you’ve removed all the highlights to your satisfaction, it’s time to save your edited PDF. Look for an option like “Download.” Click on it to save the PDF to your computer or device.

How to Remove Highlight in PDF Using Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat is a great PDF editor that can help you remove highlights from a document. However, it’s not the most budget-friendly option for this task since it’s a premium tool with advanced features. To remove highlights in Adobe Acrobat, just follow these easy steps:

Step 1. Start by launching Adobe Acrobat and uploading the file with highlights.

Step 2. Select the highlighted text area you want to delete, and it will be highlighted with a blue outline.

Step 3.  A toolbox with three icons will pop up. Select the third one (the trash symbol) to delete the highlights.

Step 4. Finally, save and download your highlight-free document.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, you have three easy ways to remove PDF highlights, whether you’re using the free PDFgear or the powerful Adobe Acrobat. It’s important to note that PDFgear can handle highlight removal on both Windows and Mac, whether you’re working offline or online.