How do you color a text box in acrobat?

February 21, 2022 12:03 PM

Super easy to change the background color in text boxes in other programs. Can't figure it out in acrobat

In word and other programs I just insert text box, go to the background shade color, pick a shade and that's it... Just like that I can type in the text box with the box having a solid background color. In adobe I can only seem to type in the text box, but can't figure out how to change the background so its not transparent. The transparency means that whatever text is behind the text box can easily be seen making what I type in the box illegible.

WHen i look it up in google- as usual- it tells me to do something that does not work. (Control+E does not bring up a properties box for me in adobe).

It's a PDF form that I need to edit

posted by fantasticness to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

That's completely incorrect. The correct answers in that thread indicated that you can indeed do extensive editing in Acrobat, because the full version of Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) has extensive editing capabilities.

First, do you have the full version? (i.e. the paid subscription version). If not, that's what you need. Reader won't do what you need to do.

When you open the file, click on the Tools tab at the the top. Then select Comment under "Share and Review". Then you can use the Shapes menu (the icon with a triangle, square, and circle) to select the rectangle tool. Draw your rectangle, then click on the colored circle two icons over (mine defaults to yellow, so i assume yours will, too), and from there you can select the fill and border color.
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:32 PM on February 21, 2022

You could also just use the text box tool, type what you need in there, and change the background to white and the text to black.
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:33 PM on February 21, 2022

Note: my first sentence is a response to an incorrect answer that has since been deleted.
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:54 PM on February 21, 2022