Online Tool Store
PDF Text Highlighter Export
Scan a PDF for existing highlight annotations and export the highlighted passages, grouped by page, as a clean plain-text summary you can copy or download.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.
Works on real highlight annotations already present in a PDF — it can't detect highlighting done with a physical marker on a scanned page.
Example shown below — upload your own PDF to replace it.
How it works
- Upload a PDF that already contains highlight annotations.
- The tool scans every page for annotation objects with subtype "Highlight," entirely in your browser.
- Matching passages are listed by page number and can be downloaded as a plain-text summary.
FAQ
Does this work on any PDF with colored text?
No — it looks for real highlight annotation objects embedded in the PDF (the kind created by Acrobat, Preview, or most PDF readers' highlight tool), not text that merely appears colored or bold in the rendered page.
Will it work on a scanned document?
Only if highlights were added digitally on top of the scan using a PDF annotation tool. A physical highlighter used before scanning leaves no annotation data for the tool to detect.
Where does the highlighted text come from?
When a highlight annotation includes an attached comment, that comment is used directly. Otherwise the tool notes the highlight's approximate location on the page — full pixel-accurate text extraction under a highlight requires a heavier server-side text-layout engine.
Highlight export vs. full PDF annotation tools
| Feature | Online Tool Store | Full PDF editor |
|---|---|---|
| Quick highlight-only export | ✓ | ✗ |
| Add or edit highlights | ✗ | ✓ |
Use this to quickly pull together a reading summary; use a full annotation editor when you need to create or modify highlights.