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Preview jumps to previous highlight whenever I highlight; also you can't undo when it highlights the entire document

As the title says, whenever I highlight in Preview, it jumps back up to the previous highlight. My friends have experienced this too, and we all express a lot of frustration since we have to annotate very long pdfs and it takes forever to scroll/click back down each time lol... This is a recurring issue and has been since I got my Mac.


The other Preview issue I have is sometimes after I highlight (I select first and then hit highlight. It shouldn't stay on, but that's for another time) I press Cmd + S to save, but I fat finger it and hit Cmd + A. That then highlights the entire document and I can't Cmd + Shift + Z or undo it in any way. If you hit Edit in the menu bar, you won't even see that the action was performed. The only way I've found to reverse it is to individually remove highlights from each page, but that also removes any previous highlights I had. See below:


When I "remove highlight" it removes highlight from the entire page (and not the entire document).



Below is another document before and after. You can't see that the action occurred under "Edit"



I assume this issue is because of the coding that separates each page into a separate item — You can't drag text boxes across pages or undo multiple-page actions. But you CAN highlight all pages. Someone help please? Also, can an administrator make a Preview topic to improve Preview

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 12.1

Posted on Jun 13, 2022 8:28 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 16, 2022 7:39 AM

I had the exact same question today and I found the answer/solution in this 2014 thread:

How to remove annotations from Preview or… - Apple Community


from what I understand, cmd+a is not properly an action, so you cannot undo (i.e. cmd+z) it;

cmd+a indeed (as you point out) applies a selection to EACH of the pages and therein lies the solution as per the above thread: you go to TOOLS>SHOW INSPECTOR>ANNOTATION (the pencil on the right extreme) and there you'll find ALL your highlight actions; all you have to do is DELETE the ones you don't need; just pick the moment (date and time) you pressed cmd+a and you'll see as many actions as pages in your document; delete them one by one or in blocks; you'll (miraculously) see the document change and get back to the moment prior to your fat finger snafu as you do;


despite the facebooks and the alex jones of the cyberworld, the internet is such a wonderful thing, don't you agree?


kudos and thanks to ToftheRocks’s Profile - Apple Community who, by the way, would be a great real "community specialist" (there, I said it)...


( :



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4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 16, 2022 7:39 AM in response to azertytype

I had the exact same question today and I found the answer/solution in this 2014 thread:

How to remove annotations from Preview or… - Apple Community


from what I understand, cmd+a is not properly an action, so you cannot undo (i.e. cmd+z) it;

cmd+a indeed (as you point out) applies a selection to EACH of the pages and therein lies the solution as per the above thread: you go to TOOLS>SHOW INSPECTOR>ANNOTATION (the pencil on the right extreme) and there you'll find ALL your highlight actions; all you have to do is DELETE the ones you don't need; just pick the moment (date and time) you pressed cmd+a and you'll see as many actions as pages in your document; delete them one by one or in blocks; you'll (miraculously) see the document change and get back to the moment prior to your fat finger snafu as you do;


despite the facebooks and the alex jones of the cyberworld, the internet is such a wonderful thing, don't you agree?


kudos and thanks to ToftheRocks’s Profile - Apple Community who, by the way, would be a great real "community specialist" (there, I said it)...


( :



Preview jumps to previous highlight whenever I highlight; also you can't undo when it highlights the entire document

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