Highlight text with chat

Last updated on Aug 31, 2026

Add, recolor, or remove PDF text highlights with AI Assistant in Acrobat using plain language.

While working with PDFs in Acrobat, you can ask the AI Assistant to highlight text by describing it in plain language. The AI Assistant reads your document content to locate the text based on your request, marks it, and shows you a preview of all matching instances. 

You can ask the AI Assistant to perform the following actions conversationally:

  • Add highlights: Apply a highlight to text identified by meaning.
  • Change highlight color: Update the color of existing highlights.
  • Remove highlights: Delete highlights from the identified text.
  • Change the highlighted area: Adjust the text that an existing highlight covers.

Open the PDF in Acrobat.

Select AI Assistant in the top bar to open the chat panel.

In the chat field, describe what you want to highlight in plain language. For example:

  • To add: Highlight all dates in yellow or highlight all company names in blue.
  • To change color: Change all yellow highlights to green.
  • To remove: Remove all highlights in the conclusion section.
  • To change the highlighted area: Extend the highlight on page 2 to include the next sentence.
Tip

You can highlight and format text by what it means or by how it looks. For example, ask AI Assistant to highlight all email addresses, or highlight all bold headings. If a change does not run as expected, add more detail to your prompt, such as the highlight color, section names, or page numbers.

Select Submit.

Review the highlighted text and the count of matches that AI Assistant found in the chat panel.

Select Next or Remove highlight based on your request to apply the change or to move to the next instance.

Note

To undo the action performed by the AI Assistant, select Undo   from the top bar. If a change does not run as expected, add more detail to your prompt, such as specific wording, section names, or page numbers. If a tool does not support chat editing, the AI Assistant provides step-by-step guidance instead. If the problem persists, check common issues and their fixes.