If Auto-Highlight isn't recognizing your character names, the cause is almost always one of two things: the script isn't formatted to the industry standard, or the PDF has been flattened.

Check your script's formatting

Auto-Highlight recognizes industry-standard Character Name and Dialogue formatting. Scriptation works with PDFs and doesn't receive Character / Dialogue metadata from screenwriting programs, so it analyzes the margins of each page to find character names and dialogue.

Standard formatting indents character names close to the middle of the page — they're not centered — with dialogue immediately below. Some character names include extensions such as O.S. (offscreen), V.O. (voiceover), or CONT'D (when dialogue is interrupted by an action paragraph).

Scripts formatted this way are highlighted reliably. If a script isn't formatted to the industry standard, names can be missed. For example, the formatting in this script looks standard, but it isn't — and Scriptation won't detect the character names:

Stage and theatrical scripts

Many stage scripts place character names flush against the left margin, in the same spot as Action Lines, so Scriptation reads them as action text. That's why Scene Headings and Action Lines can populate while the Characters list stays empty. Scriptation's theatrical templates for Final Draft and Microsoft Word are set up to work with Auto-Highlight.

The Characters list worked before and stopped

There's no manual "rescan" option — Auto-Highlight reads the page formatting each time. If a script that used to work stops populating the Characters list, compare its formatting with a copy that still works.

Check whether the PDF is flattened

If the formatting is correct but names still aren't highlighted, the PDF might be flattened. A flattened PDF no longer contains recognizable text, so Scriptation (or any PDF program) can't read any of it. This often happens with scanned files and with some watermarking programs.

To test, try the Text Highlight tool on a line of the script:

If Text Highlight doesn't recognize any text, the file is flattened. Ask your production office whether they can send the script another way.

What's Next

How should my script be formatted?
What is a Flattened PDF?
Auto-Highlight doesn't carry over to new drafts — here's why
What's the difference between Text Highlight vs Highlighting with the Marker?

Updated on: 08/10/2026