How to enable/activate a small text box behind/below another bigger text box?

[clsven]

Sometimes I want to edit a (smaller) text box which is behind/below another bigger text box.

Whenever I click on the smaller text box the upper bigger textbox is activated/marked instead.

How can I "click through" the upper text box and activate the smaller text box behind?

[Willy Van Nuffel]

I suppose it goes about base-content-textboxes (not about comment-textboxes).

In that case you must move the mouse-pointer upon one of the text-characters in the smallest textbox before clicking anything.

Another possibility would be to activate the "Content" pane (via the View-ribbon > Panes), then click the tiny arrow before the page in question to see its content. Click on the desired text (in the Content pane) to select the related textbox.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi clsven,

Willy is pointing you in the right direction regards the Content Pane, if they are form fields then the Fields Pane is the place to look.

If they actually are annotation text boxes then there is a modifier key, hold shift then click to select the text box that is below.

[clsven]

In that case you must move the mouse-pointer upon one of the text-characters in the smallest textbox before clicking anything.

Does NOT work.
I zoomed into and put the mouse exactly a such a letter before clicking.
But the upper bigger box is always marked anyway

Another possibility would be to activate the "Content" pane (via the View-ribbon > Panes), then click the tiny arrow before the page in question to see its content. Click on the desired text (in the Content pane) to select the related textbox.

This works, but it is very, very tedious and user unfriendly

In addition I have multiple textboxes with "xxx" or "?" as content (which I want to replace by real text).
I have to click about 20 items until I find the corresponding "xxx" or "?" in page.

This must be changed in future versions

What about marking the smaller, inner box when I press additionally <Ctrl>?

BTW: Pressing <Shift> does not help either

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Can you please post an example PDF ?

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]

Can you please post an example PDF ?

That will definitely help in resolving the issue.

[clsven]

Ok, here we go.

Attached will find a corresponding sample pdf.

Due to privacy reasons I had to delete almost all unnecessary stuff.

But the remaining parts show the problem.

Now load it in XChange Editor, switch to "Edit" mode and try to mark the rightmost "x" (=right of "Diele(flur)," textbox with one click.
You can't

You can if you move at first the upper, big, overlying textbox to another place on the pdf page.

One more strange issue on this page:

As you can see there is another textbox with text "--.--.----"
If I delete it then I delete "my" special "x" textbox (see above) too (not the text but the textbox around it.
How can this be?
How can two independent textboxes be linked?
How can unlink them?

sample mark textbox below.pdf

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, clsven

Thank you for the sample file. Part of this issue is that the text objects were created in a sporadic order by whatever application generated them, as you can see here, each of the "X" or "--" objects is orders quite randomly:

PDFXEdit_aP8vk0b2Gs.gif

If you manually re-order these items (simple drag/drop within the content pane), you will find that you can restore the whole line into single entity (the pesky X in the middle of the line is no longer its own floating object).

image.png

Unfortunately, because the remaining text is within an "Xform" object, it will be forced to remain separate from these text items, beyond that, the presence of the underscore character would prevent these two text blocks from merging under normal circumstances. Ideally, if you wish for two text blocks to become one, it is best to delete the smaller one entirely, and then edit the larger, so that the desired items are placed directly within it (in this case, deleting the underscores to replace them with an X).

Kind regards,

[clsven]

Hello Daniel,

thank you for trying to answer.

However these are answers for question I didn't ask

I am not author of the original PDF document.
And yes, it may be that the original pdf was created rather amateurishly.

If the textbox in focus is a XForm object or not (a "normal textbox?) shouldn't matter for me as normal user.
Xform stay separate from upper text box? Ok accepted.

I need an easy way to click through the upper textbox and select the XForm beneath.

I don't want to fiddle around with merging textboxes with XForm boxes.

The sample I posted previously is not a rare example but happens occasionally.

So again: How can I select easily (!) a smaller textbox below a bigger one?
Easily means NOT by opening content pane and navigate through dozend of items.

Claudia

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi clsven

understood, you are not looking to change the documents you receive, just select content, and to be honest it isn't looking easy for me. This used to work in V8 using "Alt" and it seems to not be working in V9.

We will dig a little deeper.