Remove or replace document structure tags

If adding tags to a PDF in Adobe Acrobat results in a tagging structure that is overly complicated or too problematic to fix, you can use the TouchUp Reading Order tool to remove or replace the current structure. If the document contains mostly text, you can select a page and then remove headings, tables, and other elements to create a cleaner, simpler tagging structure.

Acrobat can retag an already tagged document after you first remove all existing tags from the tree.

Remove all tags from a PDF

  1. Open the Tags tab (View > Navigation Panels > Tags) and select the root (topmost) tag, Tags.
  2. In the Tags tab, choose Options > Delete tag.
Note: The Clear Page Structure command in the TouchUp Reading Order dialog box removes all tags from the currently visible pages.

Replace the existing tag structure

This procedure works best in pages that contain a single column of text. If the page contains multiple columns, each column must be selected and tagged individually.

  1. Select the TouchUp Reading Order tool.
  2. In the document pane, drag to select the entire page. The selection includes both text and nontext elements.
  3. Ctrl-drag (Windows) or Command-drag (Mac OS) around nontext page elements—such as figures and captions—to deselect them, until only text is selected on the page. Click Text in the TouchUp Reading Order dialog box.
  4. In the document pane, select a nontext page element, such as a figure and caption, and click the appropriate button in the dialog box to tag it. Repeat until all page content is tagged.