How to Add Tooltips to PDFs in Adobe Acrobat (PC & Mac)

This tutorial shows how to add tooltips to PDFs in Adobe Acrobat. Specifically, we will add tooltips to forms and navigation buttons.

What Are Tooltips?

Tooltips are short pieces of information that appear when users hover their cursor over interactive elements.

Tooltips are spoken by screen reading software. Therefore, ensure that your tooltips provide additional information to help users instead of repeating existing text. Not all form elements and buttons require tooltips.

Quick Links:

How to Add Tooltips to Forms

How to Add Tooltips to Navigation Buttons

This tutorial is also available as a YouTube video showing all the steps in real time.

Watch more than 100 other writing-related software tutorials on my YouTube channel.

The images below are from Adobe Acrobat DC. These steps also apply to Adobe Acrobat 2020 and Adobe Acrobat 2017. The process is the same for PC and Mac users. Adobe’s free PDF display software, Acrobat Reader, doesn’t provide a way to add tooltips.

How to Add Tooltips to Forms

These steps assume you have already created your form. We will walk through the steps to create forms in an upcoming tutorial.

Open the PDF containing the form.
Select the Tools tab.

Tools tab in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 1. Tools tab

Select Prepare Form in the Tools Center.

Prepare Form button in the Tools Center in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 2. Prepare Form button

Select the selection arrow in the Prepare Form toolbar if it is not already selected.

Selection arrow in the Prepare Form toolbar in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 3. Selection arrow

Double-click the form element to open the Properties dialog box.

Form elements can be text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, list boxes, dropdown menus, date fields, digital signature boxes, and buttons. The name of the Properties dialog box will reflect the element you selected.

Select the General tab if you are not already there.

General tab in the Text Field Properties dialog box in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 4. General tab

Type the text into the Tooltip text box.

Tooltip text box in the Text Field Properties dialog box in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 5. Tooltip text box

Select the Close button.

Close button in the Text Field Properties dialog box in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 6. Close button

Select the Preview or Close button in the Prepare Form toolbar.

Preview and Close buttons in the Prepare Form toolbar in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 7. Preview and Close buttons

Hover your cursor over the form element to see your new tooltip.

Example of tooltip in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 8. Tooltip example

Important Note: Adobe doesn’t provide a formal method to delete or edit tooltips. Instead, repeat the steps above, and then delete or edit the text in the Tooltip text box in the Properties dialog box (see figure 5).

These steps assume you have already created your navigation button.

To learn how to create navigation buttons, please see “How to Create Navigation Buttons in PDFs with Adobe Acrobat” and “How to Create Buttons to Page Views in PDFs with Adobe Acrobat.”

Open the PDF containing the button.
Select the Tools tab (see figure 1).
Select Rich Media in the Tools Center.

Rich Media button in the Tools Center in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 9. Rich Media button

Select Select Object in the Rich Media toolbar.

Select Object button in the Rich Media toolbar in Adobe Acrobat — Figure 10. Select Object button

1. Double-click the button to open the Button Properties dialog box.
2. Type the text into the Tooltip text box (see figure 5).
3. Select the Close button (see figure 6).
4. Select the Close button in the Rich Media toolbar.