How to Extract Highlighted Text from PDFs [3 Free & Paid Tools]

Many people, like you, don’t stop at just highlighting texts on PDF. To focus on key information quickly, it is quite essential to extract and export highlighted text from pdf.

The following 3 powerful PDF highlight extractors can help you copy and save highlighted text from a PDF. Pick one that caters to your needs most.

PDFgear – Free PDF Editor for Manually Copying Highlighted Text

The first PDF highlight extractor we recommend is PDFgear. It works on Windows, Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

Unlike many memory-hogging alternatives, the installer file size of PDFgear is about only 100MB, which won’t burden your computer.

When it comes to extracting highlights from PDF, PDFgear displays all the highlights and allows you to copy them all. This is indeed lots of work, but PDFgear is free completely!

Wonder how to use PDFgear to copy highlighted texts? Here is how:

Step 1. Download PDFgear on your computer and launch it. Click on the Open File button to open a PDF from a local folder.

Step 2. Go to Annotate > Annotation. All highlights will appear on your left. Click on one highlight, you will reach where it is. Copy the text and paste it to a Word, Excel, or TXT file.

Being light doesn’t mean compromising on features. It has lots of practical yet easy-to-use tools. To name a few, adding e-signatures, freehand drawings, OCR to extract texts from a scanned PDF, and compressing to reduce PDF size. All edits can be made in clicks.

Sumnotes – Best PDF Highlight Extractor Online

If you prefer no installation or want to work across platforms. The onlinepdf highlight extractor Sumnotes can meet your needs.

This tool can help you effortlessly copy all highlighted text, and download it in Word, Excel, or TXT in just several seconds.

Following are detailed steps for exporting highlights from PDF:

Step 1. Visit the Sumnotes website and upload a PDF from a local folder or Google Drive according to the prompts.

Step 2. Once the PDF is uploaded, all highlighted texts will appear on the left panel. Choose View Annotations. Filter the highlights by colors.

Step 3. Choose the desired format and click to download.

It tops our list of the best PDF highlight extractors for three reasons. First, Sumnotes is a browser-based tool that works in its cloud storage, so there’s no need to download anything. Plus, everyone gets 100 MB of free temporary cloud storage without signing up. Second, you can filter highlights by color. Lastly, it allows you to share all highlighted text via email.

However, every coin has two sides. We must admit that the limitation for free users is quite strict. Non-subscribers can only view and process the first 50 annotations, and a monthly plan costs $8.99. Besides, Sumnotes can be slow while processing big documents.

Foxit PDF Reader – Professional Choice to Export Highlighted Text From PDF

No matter how you want to edit your PDF, Foxit Reader can never be the wrong choice. It is integrated with many practical tools to help edit your PDFs, including extracting highlights.

The most obvious pro of using Foxit Reader to extract highlighted texts is a one-click export. After uploading a PDF, Foxit can detect highlighted texts and export them in one click to TXT.

If you feel like trying Foxit Reader, here is how to use it to export highlighted texts:

Step 1. Download Foxit Reader to your desktop and then launch it. Open a PDF.

Step 2. Go to Comment > Export. Choose Highlighted Text and export.

While being a professional tool, the cons of this PDF reader are also obvious. It does not support selecting and exporting individual highlights separately. Additionally, you can only export the highlights in TXT format.

Most importantly, Foxit Reader is a desktop-based software that requires a large amount of physical storage space and uses a lot of CPU resources.

Conclusion

Now, you have got the 3 easiest ways to export highlighted text from PDF. Sumnotes and Foxit can help you extract all highlighted texts in one go at a minor cost.

PDFgear is free, but it only allows you to copy highlighted texts in PDF manually. Either way has its pros and cons. Pick the method that suits you most.