Jan 27 2025
PDF Editing
3.5 min
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Annotate PDF
Edit PDF
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Discover different ways to quickly highlight important text in a PDF online for free with Xodo’s annotator tool.
PDF files have become an essential part of our work and personal life, widely used for various business reports, legal documents, job applications, eBooks, education, and so much more.
As a result, students and professionals want to highlight, review, and annotate a large number of documents on a daily basis.
Fortunately, there are simple and free online tools like Xodo that anyone can use to highlight a PDF with ease.
In this short step-by-step guide, we'll show you how to use Xodo to:
Let's jump right into it!
Follow these simple steps to highlight a PDF for free using Xodo:
Highlighting text in a PDF document online is a convenient way to review your files without needing to rely on basic PDF readers and built-in software like the Preview app on Mac.
With Xodo, you can easily highlight, underline, add notes, insert links to PDF, and leave comments for others to review and approve.
To manage and customize highlights and annotations in your file, use the panels on the left and right sides.
This feature allows you to quickly find and review all the highlights and other annotations. If you need to make changes, you can easily delete or update markups directly from the panel.
Customizing highlight color is also simple; you can choose from a range of colors and adjust the opacity to make your highlighted content stand out.
Additionally, Xodo enables you to share your file with others, making it easier to collaborate and review highlighted documents.
You can use Xodo to highlight a scanned PDF document online. Here's how:
Since scanned text in a PDF is recognized as an image, it cannot be highlighted using standard annotation tools. However, with Xodo, you can easily add highlights to scanned documents in just seconds.
Follow these steps to quickly remove highlights from your PDF using Xodo:
Xodo is a versatile PDF highlighter tool that lets you easily delete highlights and other annotations directly in your browser.
Xodo also offers a range of additional tools to help you review and annotate your content online. You can:
To access these features, simply click on the appropriate options: View, Annotate, Sign, Shapes, Insert, Measure, Redact, Crop, Edit Text, Build Form at the top of the toolbar.
Annotating a PDF is different from editing it.
When you annotate, you're adding notes, comments, highlights, underlines and callouts without changing the file. It's a great way to review documents, share feedback, or draw attention to important sections.
Editing a PDF involves making changes to the original content, like adding new or updating existing text, which usually requires access to more advanced PDF software.
With Xodo, you get the best of both worlds. You can easily annotate your PDFs without affecting the original content, and you can also edit them directly in your browser.
From highlighting text to adding underlines and callouts, Xodo is ideal for students, educators, professionals, and anyone who needs to frequently review and collaborate on PDFs.
Xodo offers a range of features to modify, annotate, sign, fill out, redact, and convert files in a secure, intuitive online PDF editor.
So, why wait? Experience a more efficient way to review and work with your documents.
Explore all 40+ online Xodo tools below or check out our Adobe Acrobat alternative to access more advanced, business-ready features completely offline.
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