Prevent preview from creating text boxes

pdfpreview

For some time now I have a problem in Preview. Whenever something on a PDF looks like it could be a text box or field (such as a horizontal line) and I click in the vicinity of it, above or below the line, then Preview creates a textbox (assuming it is a form that I want to fill in). This behavior is certainly pretty new in Preview, although it might have been around for a few OS updates.

I find this behavior rather annoying and would like to be able to turn it off (or at least I'd like to not have it triggered by a single click … clicking with some control key pressed down might be useful).

Any hints what I might try, or where else I might look for help would be much welcome!

Best Answer

Open the Markup toolbar and switch from Text Selection to Rectangular Selection .

It's not possible to set this as the default — this must be changed each time you want to disable this functionality.

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