Acrobat 9 Properties bar greyed out for highlighting

Question

I have posted on this issue last year, and also wrote to one of the admins -- all without any solutions, and the problem remains as bad as ever.  I imagine there are a lot of other people running into this.
Acrobat 9 Properties bar greyed out (or disappears entirely) when text selected: it happens to me CONSTANTLY, using both Acrobat 8 Pro & Acrobat 9 Pro, all fully updated.  Tech support is useless and refuses to acknowledge or solve this extremely annoying problem.
I need to highlight text (using different opacities of highlighting) in a variety of PDFs: scanned-ClearScan OCR, ebooks, downloaded journal articles, etc.  None of them are "restricted" in any way for security, commenting, etc.
Within a few minutes of editing, when I go to highlight some text or change opacity, one of two things will happen spontaneously.
1) Properties bar disappears entirely when text selected (erroneously changes to "No current selection")
or
2) Properties bar suddenly greyed out when text selected
It is absolutely inconceivable that Adobe is unaware of this absurd defect -- and is unwilling or unable to fix such a simple functionality so that it works consistently and correctly!
And no, this is not a matter of "turning on/off" the bar using <cntrl-E> -- that's irrelevant to this defect.
And furthermore, commenting text formatting changes are not retained when set as new default (e.g., opacity of highlighting changes randomly from 20% > 60%, etc.)
And I don't want to reset all toolbars, because I have them customized just-so.
Can someone with more expertise PLEASE, PLEASE explain this problem or suggest a fix?
thank you,
calguy2010

Answer 1

Assumptions for this test:
1.  Acrobat has been configured so that the "Text Box Tool" (part of the  "Comment & Markup Toolbar") is visible on the toolbar.
   (Tools --> Customize Toolbars... may need to be used to se this up)
2. The "Properties Bar" is visible (a Ctrl-E should bring it up if it is not already so)
If you had to make changes to get this configuration set, close all Acrobat windows before proceeding so that the settings will be remembered and used when new windows are open.
******BUG******
Text box TEXT PROPERTIES only accessible in most recent file opened.
Steps to reproduce bug:
  1. Open a 1st PDF
  2. Open a 2nd different PDF
  3. Arrange so both are visible.
  4. in the 1st PDF create a text box and notice how the window for the 2nd PDF gets the TEXT BOX PROPERTIES BAR
  5. notice how there is no way to change the text box properties in the first window.
  Results: Text box properties can only be changed in the most recently opened window.
  Expected results: Text box properties should work for all windows!
Note that no properties (color, fill, font, ...) of any object (line, rectangle, callout, ...) can be changed using the Properties Bar if the properties bar is not part of the last window opened.
The only kludgy workaround I've found is that if I need a working properties bar in a particular window I can:
1) save the file to capture any outstanding changes that might not have been captured (this is an optional step)
2) make a throw-away minor change to the file (I usually draw a short line segment)
3) Go to File --> Revert (& Confirm)
The file will close and reopen without the throw-away change and it will now be the last file opened so it will now have a working properties bar.
Go here and report it and perhaps if they hear from enough of us they will take the time to do something about it.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform