Highlight Multiple Text Keywords by Text Search
- Introduction
- This tutorial demonstrates how to automatically highlight specific items of text in a PDF document, using the AutoBookmark plug-in.
- This method uses a multiple keyword text search to look for text in an input document, and highlight any occurrences of it. Text can be highlighted in various user-specified colors or mixed colors scheme.
- Automate this task using the Action Wizard tool (known as "Batch Processing" in earlier Acrobat versions) to highlight search text in multiple PDF documents at once with a single click (requires AutoBookmark Pro and Adobe Acrobat Pro). This operation can be also executed from a command-line BAT file.
- Prerequisites
- You need a copy of Adobe® Acrobat® along with the AutoBookmark™ plug-in installed on your computer in order to use this tutorial. Both are available as trial versions.
- Step 1 - Open the Tool
- Open the document that you want to add text highlights to in Adobe Acrobat, and press "Plug-ins > Highlight > Highlight Text By Search...".
- Step 2 - List Search Text
- Use the "Highlight Text by Search" dialog to configure the text search and highlighting options.
- The input document will be searched for text listed in the 'Highlight Words' entry box. List search items here, one-per-line. Any occurrences of these pieces of text that are detected within the document will be highlighted.
- Optional: use the "Save/Load Words From Text File..." buttons to save a search list for later reuse.
- Step 3 - Select Processing Options
- Use the checkboxes on the right of the dialog to control the search (e.g.: the text search in this example will be case sensitive - only exact matches will be highlighted).
- Step 4 - Select Appearance Options
- Use the "Appearance Options" section to change the highlighting color by using the drop-down list. By default, matching text will be highlighted in yellow. Optionally use the "Highlight each search term with a different color" option to automatically assign up to 20 contrasting colors for each item.
- Step 5 - Run the Procedure
- The current configuration can be saved as a settings file in *.txt format for future re-use via the "Save Settings..." button. A previously-saved settings file can be loaded by pressing "Load Settings...".
- Press "OK" to run the search and highlight matching text.
- Step 6 - Check the Results
- A report box will open, showing the number of highlights created. Press "OK" to close it.
- Check that the desired text has been correctly highlighted in the document:
- You can find a list of other step-by-step bookmarking tutorials here: http://www.evermap.com/abm_bm_summary.asp#tutorials.