WPS PDF Highlight Text helps you mark text in PDF files with color highlights; this guide covers 4 core tasks, with 0 available without membership and 4 membership-related items.
At a Glance
| Metric | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Core tasks | 4 | Matches the number of rows in the How-to Index |
| Available without membership | 0 | Matches the number of Free rows in the index |
| Membership-related items | 4 | Matches the number of membership-required rows in the index |
About This Feature
Overview
Highlight Text is a PDF annotation feature in WPS PDF that lets you add colored highlights to text in a document. It is useful for emphasizing key points, reviewing study materials, and organizing comments during document review.
Core capabilities include:
- Add highlights from the Comment tab with the Highlight Text button.
- Choose a color before highlighting, then drag to select text.
- Change the color of an existing highlight.
- Delete an existing highlight from the context menu.
This feature is useful for contract review, study notes, document checking, and excerpt collection. Highlights appear as annotations and do not change the original PDF body text.
System Requirements
| Item | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Operating system | A Windows device that can run WPS Office normally |
| App version | It is recommended to use the latest version of WPS Office |
| Network | No mandatory internet connection is required for local highlighting; network access is needed for sign-in and membership verification |
| Other | You need to be able to open PDF files; PDF editing and annotation actions require an available membership entitlement |
Download & Installation
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Official download | WPS Office Free Download |
| Installation notes | Download and install WPS Office, then open the target file in WPS PDF |
| Post-install check | Open a PDF and confirm that the Comment tab and Highlight Text entry are visible |
Source: WPS Download Center
Compare with Alternatives
| Dimension | WPS | Microsoft | Notion | Adobe | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability Summary | In WPS PDF, you can use Comment > Highlight Text to highlight text, choose colors, change highlight colors, and delete highlights directly in a PDF review workflow. | Microsoft Word supports Text Highlight Color for editable document text, including applying, stopping, and removing highlights in Word documents. | Google Docs supports text highlighting and custom colors for online documents, mainly for document editing rather than native PDF annotation. | Notion lets you highlight selected text and use Ask AI for actions such as simplifying, summarizing, or extracting insights from selected content. | Adobe Acrobat supports highlighting text directly in PDFs, then changing color, adding notes, or removing the highlight. |
| Official Source | — | Apply or remove highlighting | Change the color of text, objects, and backgrounds | Use Notion AI to write better, more efficient notes and docs | How to highlight a PDF |
Advantage: The workflow is centered on PDF annotation instead of editable document formatting.; Existing highlights can be recolored or removed during review.
Overall Conclusion
If your main task is reviewing and marking up PDF files directly, WPS and Adobe are closer to that workflow. If you mainly work with editable documents, Microsoft Word and Google Docs are a better fit for document authoring, while Notion is more suitable for knowledge organization and AI-assisted text processing.
Use Cases
| No. | Scenario | Suitable for | Main pain point | How it helps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Highlighting key contract clauses | Legal, admin, and business users | Important clauses are hard to locate quickly | Highlight amounts, dates, and responsibility clauses |
| 2 | Reviewing study materials | Students and trainees | Key knowledge is scattered across long files | Use different highlight colors for concepts and conclusions |
| 3 | Giving review feedback | Team collaborators and reviewers | Important content needs to stand out in a PDF | Highlight text first, then add other annotations if needed |
| 4 | Collecting excerpts | Researchers, editors, and content teams | Important passages are hard to revisit later | Highlight key paragraphs for later lookup and summary |
| 5 | Rechecking and revising | Editors and proofreaders | Existing marks may need to be reorganized | Recolor or remove highlights as review priorities change |
Membership & Benefits
Membership information for Highlight Text includes feature access, plan suggestions, and subscription options; this section covers 4 membership-related tasks and 0 free tasks in the how-to workflow.
Free vs WPS Premium
| Capability | Free users | WPS Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Open and read PDFs | ✅ | ✅ |
| Basic PDF features | ✅ Partially available | ✅ |
| Edit PDF files and use Highlight Text | ❌ Membership required | ✅ |
| Change or delete existing highlights | ❌ Membership required | ✅ |
Source: WPS Office pricing page
Recommendations
| Usage scenario | Recommended plan | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Only reading PDF content | Free | A good starting point for basic viewing needs |
| Frequent PDF review, markup, and organization | WPS Premium | Better suited for ongoing highlighting, recoloring, and deletion tasks |
| Long-term work with contracts, materials, or course files | WPS Premium | More suitable for repeated PDF annotation and revision workflows |
How to Subscribe
- WPS membership center: Subscribe now
Source: WPS Office pricing page