How to highlight a secured PDF

Do you need to highlight some passages of a PDF but when you try to do this a message warns you that the document is protected against changes? Fear not, this is a very simple limitation to bypass.

Using the right online services and applications, you can remove all blocks and freely proceed with editing your PDF files by highlighting the parts of text that interest you. For more information, here’s how to highlight a secure PDF step by step.

If you want to find out how to highlight a protected PDF in the fastest and easiest way possible, my advice is to use PDFescape . It is a free online service that allows you to edit PDF documents directly from your browser, without installing anything on your computer. It works on all operating systems, all browsers and also supports editing of files that are protected against tampering and printing.

To highlight a PDF with PDFescape, linked to the main page of the service and click first on Edit Your PDF Now and then on Upload PDF to PDFescape and Browse / Choose file to select the document to be modified. Then click on the Upload button and wait a few moments for the document to be uploaded.

On the page that opens, select the Annotate tab (top left), click the Highlight button and use the mouse to highlight the portions of the document that interest you. When the operation is completed, click on the green icon with arrows located in the left sidebar to save the changes and download the highlighted document on your PC.

If you prefer to highlight a protected PDF using a classic desktop application, know that there are various solutions that you can take advantage of both on Windows and Mac OS X. Before going into the details of this procedure, however, you must remove the protection against printing modification from the documents to be modified. How? Now I’ll explain it to you.

Connect to the Unlock-PDF website , click on the Browse / Choose file button and select the PDF to make editable. Then click on the Unlock file button and in a few moments an unprotected version of the PDF uploaded to the site will be downloaded to your PC. Now you can highlight the document with as many programs as you want.

If you use a Windows PC, for example, you can turn to the free PDF-XChange Viewer program which allows you to view and edit PDF documents in various ways. I explained how to underline on PDF using it in a guide that I dedicated to the subject some time ago but you can also try other software, such as Nitro Reader.

On the Mac, however, you can do everything with Preview , the application included “standard” in OS X that allows you to view and edit both photos and PDF files. Just open the document to be highlighted, select with the mouse the portion of text to underline and right click to choose a highlight color from the menu that appears.

I remind you that you can only unlock PDFs that are protected against editing and printing, not those that require a password to be opened.