Imported PDF-documents show highlighted passages (yellow bars), but not the highlighted text itself - the lines are blank. The same documents display correctly when viewed with an external viewer. I´m using Scrivener for Windows v. 1.2.3.0.
My variation on this problems is that if you highlight something, it tries and highlight too much with black lines.
Unfortunately this is a bug with the PDF tool that Scrivener uses; it does not properly interpret the layers, so the highlight color is placed in front of, rather than behind, the text. If you’re using a PDF program that supports varied opacity in highlights, you could try using only about 50% opacity so that the text will show through in Scrivener. Otherwise I’m afraid you’ll just need to use the Open in External Editor option (Ctrl+F5) for highlighted PDFs to view them in your default program for now.
Highlighting PDFs isn’t possible in Scrivener’s editor, so I assume you’re working with another format. Could you explain your set up in a little more detail, what you’re doing and what results you’re getting? Is this working with text that has been imported or copied from another program and pasted in? This sounds like something a few other people experienced working with text that was copied from a browser (notably from Gmail documents), but that wasn’t I think always prompted by the user attempting to highlight so much as text just looking blacked-out in places. If you can give me the step-by-step to reproduce what you’re seeing, or at least as much as you can remember about what occurred (if you can’t reproduce it yourself), that would help. Thanks!
Highlighting PDFs isn’t possible in Scrivener’s editor, so I assume you’re working with another format. Could you explain your set up in a little more detail, what you’re doing and what results you’re getting? Is this working with text that has been imported or copied from another program and pasted in? This sounds like something a few other people experienced working with text that was copied from a browser (notably from Gmail documents), but that wasn’t I think always prompted by the user attempting to highlight so much as text just looking blacked-out in places. If you can give me the step-by-step to reproduce what you’re seeing, or at least as much as you can remember about what occurred (if you can’t reproduce it yourself), that would help. Thanks!
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That’s good to know that PDF highlighting isn’t possible. Can I make a feature request out of it, then? What I’ve done is import a few PDF’s in my research folder so I can quickly refer to them. While I sometimes like having mutiple programs open, when it comes to writing I want as few distractions as possible, so I really don’t want Acrobat and Scrivener open at the same time. Some of the the PDF’s have a non-linked websites in them or information I want to use to remind myself what I need to do when writing. So automatically, I tired to highlight it like I would in Acrobat and that’s when I noticed the black lines. Not really, a bug then I guess, but more a feature limitation.
Thank you for the reply. I´m using an external viewer for now and that works out ok.
Has this highlighting issue been solved in the year since it was last discussed here? I am a new user and was excited about the Research feature of embedding reference documents. This feature is not very helpful if the PDF highlights are essentially redacted in the file in Scrivener. The key parts of the document not visible. The Ctrl+F5 feature is an awkward work-around at best.
Thanks for your interest in Scrivener! I’m afraid this issue is not something we’ve been able to address, so it’s still necessary to use the Open in External Editor option or a very translucent highlight such that the text can be read through it. We’ll be researching other PDF options for version 2 to resolve this and other PDF limitations, so you may want to sign up for the low-volume newsletter to give Scrivener another look when that’s released. Sorry we couldn’t help you out better now!
Hey there,
Saw many people suffering from this, I just figured out a free solution.
Download Foxit Reader (free) http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/
Use this as an external editor.
In foxit, when you want to highlight a document, you’ll have to adjust the opacity.
You can do so by clicking the COMMENTS tab, then click on the highlight tool, you’ll see a FORMAT tab pop up on the right side, click that then you’ll be able to adjust the opacity, reduce it to below half and highlight with that. Its still yellow and you can see it in scrivener. Have a look at attached images.
