Strike through text no longer works in OS 26

Ok, I am able to replicate your problem...partially. It is something about the PDF format, probably a bug in Tahoe regarding the way it handles tables in PDFs. Here's a snippet of one of my statements, the payments section is a table (Preview now lets you select a cell as you can see from the blue box, that wasn't possible in Sequoia) but trying to apply strikethrough fails in the table entries. The purchases section is not a formatted table in the document, and strikethrough works there.

Bugs can be reported to Apple here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

As a workaround, you can use the markup feature in Preview to draw a line through an entry. Hold the Shift key to get a straight line. You can copy and paste that line over other entries to effectively achieve the same result as strikethrough.

Apple's Preview can open PDF documents and images. It cannot open text documents.

Preview's strike through is a PDF text annotation feature for use with PDFs that have no document permission restrictions. I have observed no changes here with Tahoe 26.0.1 or now 26.1 regarding the ability to apply any PDF annotation feature in Preview.

Possible that the bank changed the export format (PDFs can be created that are locked for editing). You can try printing the bank PDF to another PDF, meaning open the downloaded PDF, use Command-P to print it, then click the PDF button at the bottom left and save it as a new PDF file. Try strikethrough on that second version of the PDF.

Hans Gilde wrote:

Strike through text no longer works in OS 26

I do the usual steps to strike through text, but nothing happens.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 26.0

The current stable release of Tahoe including bug fixes, security updates is macOS 26.1 - I would start there.

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

The bank may be sending you a PDF container around an image of your transactions. They may do that for security reasons. Open that PDF in Preview. Select the File menu > Export… Now, if the PDF filename is foo, change the name field to foo_ocr.pdf. And then have these settings before you click Save:

If the file is a PDF container wrapping an image, then this will OCR the PDF and the foo_ocr.pdf will now allow you to apply strike through to selected text. If it is a regular PDF, then this export as OCR will have no affect.

You may be dealing with transactions that are an image island in the PDF and not annotatable text. It would depend upon if the financial institution changed how they generate the PDF — that might be conincidental with the timing of the Tahoe release. It also may be something unique about that PDF that the PDFKit frameworks behind Preview are unable to handle, whether intentional, a design omission, or just a bug.

If you have the current, free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, does it allow you to apply a strike through annotation in the transaction area of the same PDF?

Seems to be working fine for me in 26.1.

This is not the first report of this that I've seen, and in replying to that one I know that it also worked in 26.0.1. So, not a generic issue with Tahoe or Preview.

For the above screenshot, I use the Print command in this Safari window and from the PDF button in the bottom left corner, I selected Open in Preview. Strikeouts work fine. Perhaps try it like that, with this page, to rule out issues deriving from the document(s) you're using.

Hans Gilde wrote:

I'm dealing with a PDF which is not an image. I cannot strike through text within the PDF using Preview. I downloaded it from my bank using Safari and converted it to a PDF as I have done in the past with the previous OS, but now I select the word or number I want to strike through, and the selected text or number stays untouched.

Let me try again. It could be the file or it could be your Mac. Maybe your bank altered the format. You don’t say how you converted it to a PDF. Use Safari’s print command on this webpage, click the PDF button at the bottom and Open in Preview. Select text then apply strikethrough. If it works, it’s the file. If it still doesn’t work, it’s your Mac. Next steps will depend on that knowledge.

Have you tried other PDFs not from your bank?

Strikethough also works for me with PDFs on Tahoe 26.1.

by default dpfs are readwrite protected files, do you experience it with other files in preview?