In this post, we will show you how to strikethrough text in a PDF document on a Windows 11/10 PC. Strikethrough is a text effect that draws a horizontal line through the middle of a given text. It is often used to mark a certain text as crossed out (or deleted) while editing or proofreading PDF documents.
Earlier, we have seen how to strikethrough text in Word and Excel. Now we will see how to do the same for the text content available in a PDF document.
You can strikethrough text in a PDF file on Windows 11/10 using free software or an online tool. We have covered both options here. Let’s check these options.
Strikethrough text in PDF document using Adobe Acrobat Reader
Download and install Adobe Acrobat Reader from get.adobe.com. After that, follow these steps to strikethrough words, sentences, or a whole paragraph in a PDF document using it:
- Launch Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Click on the Open File option in the Home menu to browse and select your PDF document to add it
- The PDF document will open up in a separate tab. A tools panel will appear on the left of the document preview. Click on the Highlight icon (third option from the top) in that tools panel
- Select the Strikethrough option from the available menu
- Now the Strikethrough tool is selected. Take your mouse cursor at the beginning of the text you want to strikethrough. Click and drag the cursor to the end of the text and then release the mouse button. A red line will appear in the middle of the text, marking the text as crossed out
- Click on the Menu option present in the top left corner of Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Use the Save as option if you want to generate a separate copy of your PDF file with strikethrough text. Otherwise, use the Save option to add changes to the original PDF file directly.
Read: Top PDF tips and tricks with Adobe Acrobat.
Strikethrough text in PDF document using Free Online PDF Editor from PDF Candy
PDF Candy is a free online PDF suite to manage PDF files. It provides a wide range of tools that help you process PDF files how you want. A PDF Editor tool is also there. Let’s see how to strikethrough text using the free online PDF Editor tool from PDF Candy:
- Open the homepage of the PDF Candy website and click on the Edit PDF option there. This will open its free PDF Editor tool
- Now click on the ADD File button to browse and select the desired PDF file from your computer. Wait for the editor to upload the file. You can also add a PDF file from your Google Drive or Dropbox account
- Now you’ll see a preview of the file. Click on the Strikethrough tool in the tools panel visible on the left section
- Once the strikethrough tool is selected, choose any of the available colors (Black, Yellow, Green, Red, etc.). Take the mouse cursor over the text content to be crossed out. Select the text content and then release the mouse cursor. The text will be crossed out with the selected color
- Once you’re done, download the output file using the Export File option in the top-right corner.
The uploaded file will automatically be deleted from the servers of PDF Candy within 2 hours.
I hope this is helpful.
Read Next: How to Extract Highlighted Text from PDF as Plain Text File
Why is strikethrough not working in PDF?
The strikethrough effect only works on searchable PDF documents. It doesn’t work on scanned PDFs. So, if the entire PDF is scanned, its pages will have images only (even if there is text content). So, if you have a scanned PDF file, you can first convert the scanned PDF to a searchable PDF, and then apply the strikethrough effect using the tool you’re using.
How do I edit a PDF in Windows 11?
You can use a third-party tool to edit your PDF document on Windows 11/10. There are some free PDF editor software for Windows PC (like PDFill, Icecream PDF Editor, etc.) that let you edit PDF text, annotate PDF, add header and footer to PDF, rotate or crop PDF pages, and more. You can also use some free cloud-based PDF Editor tools such as Kami, PDFescape, LuminPDF, etc., to edit a PDF file.
Now read: How to create a PDF file on Windows.
