Ability to highlight individual words of text objects with a selection frame

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Jensen Head
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Ability to highlight individual words of text objects with a selection frame

Post by Jensen Head »

In this example, I need to select only the texts of the right column (in order to delete them). However, even after disabling "Edit Text Elements as Blocks", the texts in the adjacent column are highlighted.
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Screenshot_2023-04-25_17-00-29.png
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Is it possible to clear the values of the right column without editing each block individually?
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Cells selection example.pdf
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Last edited by Jensen Head on Sun Dec 14, 2025 9:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Daniel - PDF-XChange
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Re: Ability to highlight individual words of text objects with a selection frame

Post by Daniel - PDF-XChange »

Hello, Jensen Head

When "edit text as blocks" is disabled, you are seeing the content items as they are, individually according to the formatting of the document, there is no assumption happening on our part.
image.png
This means that unfortunately, each row contains the text from both columns in a single object, which cannot be separated. The only way to change this would be by deleting the text in one of the two columns (with edit blocks enabled) and then creating new text objects to replace them.

Kind regards,
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Jensen Head
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Re: Ability to highlight individual words of text objects with a selection frame

Post by Jensen Head »

For those who encounter the same problem, I will provide my solution here:
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2025-12-11 20 31 13.webp
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Use the "Split Pages" command to first split a page along the red line, and then split the second page along the green line. And then merge the pages in reverse order using the "Merge Pages" command. Test blocks will be cut along column boundaries.
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If you do not want to damage the raster backing, you can first put it in a separate file, and after cutting and gluing, return it to the document, replacing the cut images.
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Daniel - PDF-XChange
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Re: Ability to highlight individual words of text objects with a selection frame

Post by Daniel - PDF-XChange »

Hello, Jensen Head

Enabling these new options may also help:
image.png
Beyond that, since this is an old post, I should note that the old "edit as blocks" function has been changed. Now instead of being a toggle, the two are entirely separate tools.
  • If you enable "Edit text" tool, you will be editing in blocks mode.
  • If you enable the "Edit objects" tool, you should be able to select and edit text objects in their original content items format, without any assumptions being made:
image(1).png
Kind regards,
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Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
PDF-XChange Co. LTD

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Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
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