PDF reader: Copy text without highlighing it

dstillman
This discussion was created from comments split from: Can't copy / paste from PDF in new built-in reader.
  • JimHokanson
    edited August 1, 2022
    It seems like copying requires first highlighting the text? I'm not seeing an option to select the text and not highlight?
  • dstillman
    @JimHokanson: It's just Ctrl/Cmd-C or Edit → Copy, like any other app.
  • JimHokanson
    @dstillman Oops, the confusion is that you need to disable all the visible buttons - for example if you are highlighting text, click to disable (and subsequently enable normal text selection). I was looking to click a "text-selection" button.
  • dstillman
    edited August 2, 2022
    To clarify, there are two highlighting modes — the default mode, where you can just select text and then click a color in the popup to create a highlight, and a mode where you lock the highlight tool on, such that any text selection results in a highlight. So there's nothing special you have to do to copy text — it's just that, if you've turned on the locked highlighting mode, any text selection will indeed create a highlight.
  • kundeng
    I just raised the same issue. The interface is not intuitive at all.
  • dstillman
    @kundeng: As I explained in your other thread, this is a standard modal approach used in many PDF readers.
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