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

[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

[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,

[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.

[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,

[Jensen Head]

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.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work in all cases. Below is a video of an incorrectly recognized layout, in which re-merging the splitted page also merges the text fragments, thereby restoring the original (incorrect) layout of the text layer.
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Heroes of Might and Magic 30th Anniversary Retrospective.webm

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("Detect tables by line separators" and "Detect tables by text layout" are enabled.)
It seems the only way to get correct text regions in these situations is to use Select Page Region > OCR Selected Region:
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2026-02-12 16 35 02.webp

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Am I right?

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Jensen Head

The Editor handles text content blocks like this in the content order. (EG, the reason that the right block is highlighted early in the left side selection, is that numerically/chonologically speaking, that content exists in the document "before" the remainder of that section.

While we are working on a visual order system which should be better equipped to handle these items, it is very much a complex beast and not something I can promise a swift turnaround on.

In effect, yes this is a known issue, however, it is caused by the document's own content order being incorrect, instead of an actual "error" on our end. While undesiriable, this is working as intended at the moment.
You can manually adjust the "line-order" in most cases through the "content" pane, by repositioning individual text data items into the correct order:

PDFXEdit_5NtxsU7xzR.gif

Kind regards,