Search PDF annotations in Preview?

How can you search your PDF annotations in Preview? There seem to be no options in the Search bar in Preview. I know you can browse highlighting and annotations via the Sidebar, but you can't search the annotations?
/edit: it seems that Adobe Reader can search these annotations - select Search (CmdShiftF), then check "Include Comments").
Can anyone enlighten me on the state of annotation search with Preview and confirm that it is missing?
Message was edited by: gko18

I will confirm that it seems to be missing - it does seem that the search bar on the right only searches the text of the PDF and not the annotations. Strange...
Thanks for the tip about Adobe Reader, I will have to check that out! One of the reasons I chose to use annotations was that I have a textbook that has been scanned as picture, not OCR, and I can't search in the text, so I figured the annotations would help me locate topics later. Hopefully I will be able to use Adobe Reader for this.

Similar Messages

Pdf Annotations in Preview

I am struggling to believe that it's not possible to search annotations inserted into a pdf with Apple's preview. The annotations (text box) are not found via spotlight nor via the search in Preview. Am I doing something wrong or is this a major shortcoming?

No one here can tell you what plans Apple have for anything. Even if they knew they would be excluded from saying by NDAs and so on.
Skim
http://skim-app.sourceforge.net
is more like the pdf reader you need.
Regards
TD

Printing PDF annotations in Preview

I'm not sure exactly where this question should go, but it is a printing problem...
I'm trying out Preview's annotation feature, and it's pretty nice, and looks great on the screen. But what if I want to print out the notes and annotations I've made? When I print, I see the little word-bubble marks, and highlighted text works fine -- but the comments themselves, which appear outside the margins onscreen, don't print. I also can't find any way to print them, even on a separate page.
Anybody know?

Hi Mike, I had the same problem, and it doesn't appear to be possible with Preview yet.
However, it was possible using Adobe Professional 8 (CS3), clicking on the "comments" button at bottom left in that app, brought up several options including printing comments. This doesn't even appear to be listed in their Help Viewer.
I don't have Adobe Reader so I can't say if this feature is included in that (free) app.
Good luck

Annotating pdf documents in Preview - the text search feature doesn't work?

Hi everyone,
I'd like to annotate my pdf documents using preview. However, I realized the other day that as soon as I start annotating a document (with notes, shapes, highlighting, etc), the preview text search doesn't work anymore.
Thanks for any help or advice!

This is a known problem. I have seen one suggestion to print the annotated PDF as a new PDF in order to get search capability back. You can try the Apple Discussions "search" feature at the upper right corner to look for more suggestions.

[SOLVED] Wanted: extract pdf annotations created in Mac OSX preview

I just had a collegue return a pdf marked up with "annotations".
I first struggled with finding a viewer that views the annotations, and those that could (evince, okular) all have more dependencies that I'd want/need.
I decided there must be an lighter weight way to extract the text of annotations from pdfs. I searched, read, and learned about pdf annotation formats and I figured out how to extract adobe annotations from a pdf. Only then did I realize that my collegue didn't use adobe. The annotations were created in Mac OSX's preview. Preview, it would seem, does not use the adobe xfpdf format for annotations, it uses some other means to embed the annotations.
I searched the pdf file in text and hex editors, but I couldn't find anything resembling what I knew to be in some of the annotations. However Preview does it, the text must be encoded and unreadable in the "raw" file. This is in contrast, it would seem, with adobe's annotations.
My question, then, is two-fold. First, are there any text-annotation extractor tools that can get notes created in OSX's preview? If not, does anyone know of any documentation outlining how Preview embeds this information? I've been googling the latter question, but I'll I'm getting is "where-to-click" level tutorials on how to DO annotations in Preview. I can't find any documentation of how that information is embeded into the file.
Note: evince does get the text of the annotations, but I'd prefer not to keep that installed. Evince-gtk is only every so slightly lighter on dependencies. Also, in evince I get flooded with "sticky notes" with all the annotation text. It would take a while to move those around and close them one at a time to be able to actually read them. I'm hoping to be able to extract all annotation text and dump it into a text file.
Last edited by Trilby (2012-05-29 00:38:32)

Holy crap, it works. A couple hours of reading ugly docs and 32 lines of code later, I have exactly what I was looking for.
I'd love it if some volunteers would try this out, beat it up, and see what breaks first so I can improve it. After a little polishing I might put it up in the AUR.
Get the code from my dropbox here
The Ugly Patchwork Makefile and a very brief TODO list are also posted.
I'll put together a PKGBUILD once this is in better order for distribution and installation. I just got the darn thing to work, it's time to celebrate, not code more.
Note to Mods: as in my "report", please move this thread to Community Contributions.
Last edited by Trilby (2012-05-29 00:34:38)

Can you search annotations in Preview?

When annotating a pdf document using preview, is there a way to search your annotations?? Thanks!!

Thanks! I appreciate your response. I should have followed with a question about other options, but now that I've checked the Preview Help I see that that capability simply doesn't exist.

Yosemite crippled PDF text annotation with Preview.

In previous versions of preview, you used to be able to select 'textbox' markup tool and one-click create textboxes wherever you want on a pdf. Now, with the new Yosemite, selecting 'text' markup tool creating a textbox in the middle of the screen, not where-ever you click. This cripples the productivity of annotating lecture slides during a lecture. I don't want my text box to always appear right in the middle of the page- I want to click to place it.
Also, why is it vertically center justified- who, EVER, used vertically center justified text rather than vertically top justified text?
Are there anyways around this?

The link below provides instructions for annotating a pdf in Yosemite Preview, and additional links at the bottom of this page provide instructions for several other pdf editing capabilities:
Select and copy text in a PDF
Fill out and sign PDF forms
Add, delete, or move pages in a PDF
Crop or rotate a PDF
Add effects to a PDF
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH20218?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

PDF Search Not Working in Preview

I cannot get the search function to work on PDFs viewed with Preview. It says not found, but I know there are matches.
Anyone seeing this problem? I feel like my Mac has been compromised by malware or something.

I cannot get the search function to work on PDFs viewed with Preview. It says not found, but I know there are matches.
Does that happen for every pdf? Some are constructed in ways that make searching impossible, or only possible with Adobe Reader. Have you tried that app?

How to I set an internal link in a PDF document using Preview? After setting a link under the Tools/Annotations menu, the link doesn't work and no detailed instructions are provided.

How to I set an internal link in a PDF document using Preview? After setting a link under the Tools/Annotations menu, the link doesn't work and no detailed instructions are provided via the Help menu other than it showing the pull-down menu selection to make.

No. I am able to use the other features such as underlining, highlighting, adding rectangles and oval and save those changes.

Merging PDF Files in Preview 5 in OS X v10.7 Lion

I recently updated to the OSX v10.7 Lion operating system. In the previous version I had, I was able to merge two or more PDF files in Preview just by dragging the thumbnail. However, in the Lion version, it is not allowing to drag one PDF file into another. It just opens them as different files in the same preview window. I need to know if someone can help me figure out how to merge these files 'cause I can't send ten different PDF files to my client. Thank you so much for any help you can provide.

Use 'Automator (applications > automator.app).
Choose 'Workflow'.
Type 'get specified finder' in the little search box.
From the list drag 'get specified finder files' into the the panel on the right. Click 'options' and check 'Show this action when the workflow runs'.
Next type 'combine pdf' in the search box, and drag 'Combine pdf pages' into the panel on the right underneath the previous one.
Save the workflow to your apps folder.
Whenever you want to merge any pdfs, click on the workflow. Add the pdfs to the dialogue box, click 'Run' in the top left of Automator. To find the resulting merged pdf, click 'Results'.
This is no doubt a clumsy way of doing it, but it works.

Merge pdf files in preview

I must be missing something. I've read the instructions for merging pdf documents in Preview, but it's just not working. Wants me to "duplicate" a file or something. This seems very un-Mac-like. I get 2 documents open, drag the thumbnails from one into another, one at a time, and then try to "Save As". Can anyone tell me what I might be doing wrong? I'm using Lion.
TIA!

This is because of the new versioning.
As I recall this is what I did.
Start with a new, blank preview page and then drag the other pdfs onto the blank form.
I am not sure how I created the new blank page. I may have created it with Adobe first.
It seems that one cannot use Preview alone to open a new blank pdf.
Now when you click Save you should be asked for a new name.
Otherwise, I think that preview will overwrite one of the other pdf files with the new files.
It's a bit confusing - I suggest experimenting with a few "scrap" pdf files first.
I wish Apple would put back the old "Save as" function. It is so much clearer and intuitive than the current scheme where often one has to search for the location of the file once it goes away.

HT2506 Hello I'm unable to open any pdf's with preview window opens up with message file couldn't be opened because you don't have permission to view it (none of the pdf's have any security thanks if you can assist

Hello this week I'm unable to open any pdf's with preview, when I select to open a window opens up with message "file couldn't be opened because you don't have permission to view it" none of the pdf's have any security thanks if you can assist

Back up all data. Don't continue unless you're sure you can restore from a backup, even if you're unable to log in.
This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.
Step 1
If you have more than one user account, and the one in question is not an administrator account, then temporarily promote it to administrator status in the Users & Groups preference pane. To do that, unlock the preference pane using the credentials of an administrator, check the box marked Allow user to administer this computer, then reboot. You can demote the problem account back to standard status when this step has been completed.
Triple-click the following line to select it. Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear, then quit Terminal.
Step 2 (optional)
Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1 or if it doesn't solve the problem.
Boot into Recovery. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select
Utilities ▹ Terminal
from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open.
In the Terminal window, type this:
res
Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:
resetpassword
Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.
Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.
Select
 ▹ Restart
from the menu bar.

Problems Editing Previous Annotations with Preview

Hi,
I was just wondering if anyone else has had a similar problem with Preview and/or has any advice on how to fix it.
Ever since upgrading to Mountain Lion, I've been having problems whenever I try to edit any of my text annotations in Preview. All of my notes for school are given as PDFs, so I have always used Preview and the textbox function to take notes during lecture. Before I upgraded, if I opened a previously-annotated document to study from and wanted to change something or add to the text, I would simply double-click the textbox and be able to fix it in 1 second.
Unfortunately, trying to make any changes to annotations has become a major process ever since switching to Mountain Lion.
Basically, as soon as I double-click any textbox to edit something I wrote at an earlier time, the box will shrink up to a single line that goes off the page and into oblivion. I have to resize the textbox over and over again just to fit it back on the page, which can be time-consuming and frustrating when paragraphs of text are suddenly condensed to one line that extends ten miles beyond the margins. It happens both with older documents from Lion and with the new documents I've only downloaded and annotated since upgrading to Mountain Lion. I thought maybe it was just my computer, but I tried it on a friend's Mac with Mountain Lion and had the same problem.
I have only used Preview for everything, so all of my annotations have been made using the same program. Also, it gives me no trouble if I try to edit as long as the document remains open; it only happens after I close out of a document and open it up again at a later time (even if it's immediately after closing it). Unfortunately, I can't keep 200+ documents open on the chance I might need to edit them at some point.
If anyone has any clue how I can stop this from happening in Preview or has a suggestion for another good PDF editor (aside from anything Adobe preferably), I would really appreciate it!!
Thank you very much in advance.

This is happening to me too! It's so frustrating especially since I've come to love Preview before upgrading to mountain lion. At first glace it seemed Preview had become more userfriendly with the textbox, line and circle drawers all separate icons now but the textboxes are such a pain. I know it only takes an extra 5 seconds or so, but by the time you add all the 5 seconds' up, it's heaps of time. It's especially hard if I'm listening to a lecture and I have to stop and fix my textboxes while the lecturer is still talking.
Sorry this isn't much of a solution, but I hope you don't feel alone dealing with this flaw!

PDF files - no preview icons

I have searched all over the place... will Tiger show a preview icon for PDF files? I only get an Adobe PDF icon, there is no preview thumbnail. I have Adobe CS Pro installed. Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
shawnotay

Hi shawnotay. Welcome to the Discussions.
Not as you would normally think of preview icons. Specifically:
- Not if Finder is in Icon or List View.
- If you put Finder in Column View and select a PDF file, a new column appears that, after a moment, shows a preview image.
You can assign preview icons to PDFs using Graphic Converter. Using its File > Convert & Modify menu choice, one can use the "Create Icon/Preview" function to create a preview icon for a PDF file. When I've used this, it assigns an image of the first page of the PDF as the preview icon.
Hope that helps.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

PDF Annotation Management in Oracle 9iFS

Do you need to manage and search for PDF annotations in Oracle
9iFS? Would you like to store PDF files that are used for
document reviews in Oracle 9iFS? Do you need to search for
files based on information stored in annotations (e.g., sticky
notes, hyperlinks, redlines). Would you like to dynamically
compile different views of annotated PDF files?
If so, we would like to discuss your requirements with you.
Please contact me at [email protected]

hello,
According to your requests, I got some tutorails that are based on certain 3rd party PDF lib.
iTextSharp-http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/1f0e5773-0c35-4370-8c55-737753f81d6d/how-do-i-add-annotations-to-an-existing-pdf-file?forum=csharpgeneral
ASPOSE-http://www.aspose.com/docs/display/pdfnet/Working+with+Annotations
Spire.PDF-http://www.e-iceblue.com/Knowledgebase/Spire.PDF/Spire.PDF-Program-Guide/Add-Annotation-to-PDF-File-in-C.html
Hope it can do you a bit fover.

Search PDF annotations in Preview?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for