Scientific articles are usually formatted with two columns. Is there a way to highlight text from only one column with Preview?
Like in my example I want to highlight only from Tree species to less so without the left column.
Best Answer
Hold the ⌥alt/option key as you drag your selection to make rectangular text selections.
Preview does attempt to detect when there are columns in the document and restrict the selection appropriately, but when this fails, you can manually constrain the selection to the column.
Probably this is not possible with Preview, but there is another (free) PDF reader that allows you to do this (at least your first three points, don't know about converting into another annotation kind): Skim.
After you've opened your PDF in Skim, you can choose Convert Notes... in the File menu. Then you have all your notes from Goodreader in the drawer panel on the right.
This seems to be a bug in Preview. There's a related thread about this topic in which many people say they are experiencing the same problem. I too have just tested it out and see the same results.
There are 2 workarounds I can think of. The 1st is to select all the annotations and set their color manually:
Open the annotations toolbar.
Press the right-most button which will show you a list of all the annotations.
Select all the annotations.
Choose a new color from the annotations toolbar.
The 2nd workaround is to use the Python script from the same thread previously mentioned.
Best Answer
Hold the ⌥alt/option key as you drag your selection to make rectangular text selections.
Preview does attempt to detect when there are columns in the document and restrict the selection appropriately, but when this fails, you can manually constrain the selection to the column.