Shared review requirements - comments disappearing

Hi,
Is there a version requirements for making comments in a shared review .pdf?
We have been having problems with some of our co-workers, who work off site and using a VPN connection
deleting comments....they were working with version 8, and we were working with version 9.
The person working off-site also keeps not being able to publish comments in the shared .pdf
with the VPN connection. What should someone do if they can't publish the comments they made in the .PDF
If the comments get deleted accidentily...is there anyway to retrieve them.
We are hosting the shared .pdf on our internal server, not on acrobat.com
Any possible reasons for this?
Thanks!

We too have this issue. I have found that cleaning
out your resource files on your C-Drive
will help reload the comments that have been previously saved to the server.
This is a somewhat complicated process but it has proven itself useful.
It is a two step process:
Step 1- Open your review tracker and select the server which probably has a "red ball" next to it, denoted that you are currently not connected to the server. You should then see all the documents that have been sent for shared review and a Trash Can on the far left. You will need to delete the document that you have lost the comments for.
Step 2- This is a longer process but it works. You will need to access your C-drive on the computer--> Select the User folder --> Your name folder "John.Doe" --> AppData--> Roaming --> Adobe--> Acrobat--> 8.0 or whatever version you might be operating --> Synchronizer --> Resources.
At this point you will now see several files that are labeled Resources. Select all of these and then delete.
You should now be able to open the original document from your desktop and connect to the server and see the previously published comments on the server.
I hope this helps!

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Shared Reviews and Commenting in Acrobat X | Acrobat Community TV | Adobe TV

In this on-demand e-seminar from the Acrobat User Community, we'll be talking about shared reviews and commenting in Acrobat X. How do you review PDF files? When a colleague asks for your notes, what's the best way to add them to the PDF file he sends you? Find out with this month's overview of review workflows!
http://adobe.ly/wQWsTm

In Acrobat X, when I first define a server location (in my case, a network folder), I can specify a file name for the "enabled for shared review" PDF (as I was used to doing in Acrobat 8), and save it where I like. And the name of the folder (containing the review comments) in that server location reflects the name of that PDF file.
However, I've just gone to create a new shared review PDF using the same server location, and it seems I no longer have the ability to specify the name of the "enabled for shared review" PDF file, and hence, the name of the folder that will contain the review comments. Acrobat X appends "_review" to the original PDF file name, saves that "..._review" file to the same folder as the original PDF, and uses that "..._review" name as the basis for naming the folder that will contain the review comments.
So, where I had (in Acrobat 8) a server location containing folders with a consistent naming convention, such as:
xyzug-review-2009-04-15.pdf__86704b66732be749b500b92b4378d49c
with Acrobat X, the best I can do is to rename the original PDF to, say,
xyzug-2012-09-06.pdf
before creating the shared review, so that I end up with:
xyzug-2012-09-06_review.pdf...
as the folder name.
In this regard, Acrobat X is more restrictive than Acrobat 8.
Or am I missing something?
An Acrobat 9 user made the very same gripe back in 2010 (http://forums.adobe.com/message/3057533), without receiving any response.

Shared Review Web Services Feature

The shared review feature is an extremely powerful feature that brings acrobat and pdf files to a whole new level. Shared review currently allows 3 repository types (Network Folder, SharePoint workspace, and Web server folder). These are all great for simple reviews and workflows, but i think that the process could be much more flexible and robust if adobe were to add a "Web Services" method. This would allow for developers to have a lot more control of the annotation data. In particular here's what it would do in my case:
Permissions: we already have a coldfusion application that has thousands of users. Users log in and coldfusion handles all of the permissions, who can view what document, and what they can do to the document in terms of making annotations, or even editing annotations of others if they are the supervisor. (some people need to view the document with others comments but shouldn't be able to make comments themselves)
Layering: we would like to adapt more of a layers concept of annotations. with web services, we could allow for the user to select the layers they want to view in an html frame and then our web service could return just those annotations for display.
I havent put much thought into it but you could even use it to connect to live cycle web services, the possibilities are endless.

I posted "Is Adobe discontinuing support for SOAP collaboration?" in this forum and in the SDK and Scripting forums, and Brian and I have already discussed Adobe's willingness to abandon solutions that they previously evangelized (SOAP, ADBC) and to hell with anyone who drank their kool-aid back in the day.
Brian and I have very similar issues (esp. auditability) because he and I work in industries with lots of government oversight (he in aerospace and me in nuclear). So, the issue for us is not NEW features but maintaining backward-compatibility with old features so that we can continue to fulfill these requirements, and if Adobe wants to cut us loose then we have no choice but to find a non-Adobe alternative.
Having said all that, I agree that adding Web services to "shared reviews" would be a good first step by Adobe toward allowing those of us who are relying on SOAP and other "deprecated" features to transition to shared reviews, but only if allows us to upload reviewer comments to a central server. However, that still won't be enough for us unless we can continue to manage document reviews centrally. All of our review cycles (i.e. the docs, reviewers, and schedules) are determined by our project managers, and that information is entered into our system by a single service administrator (or is imported programmatically from Active Directory and from our project management system). So, for us to migrate to shared reviews requires an enhanced API so we can continue to set up reviews programmatically and not have to rely on the cumbersome and clunky one-document-at-a-time approach in the shared review model.

Solution to the "Disappearing Comments" problem with shared reviews

I've been having repeated problems with users losing their comments on shared reviews, hosted on my webDAV server. After tearing my hair out for days, I wanted to share the simple fix to this issue, plus another tip:
DON'T USE PERIODS OR SPACES IN FILE NAMES. Use hyphens and underscores instead.
Illegal characters seem to gradually corrupt the file to the point where potentially every comment can get overwritten with a blank .xml file, permanently losing all your comments.
My wish to Adobe is that they would put a pop-up warning at the time of saving a file for shared reviews, something to the effect of:
"WARNING! saving a shared file with a space or a period could result in data corruption when shared over network drives or webDAV. Do you want to replace illegal characters with underscores?"
My other tip is this:
If using a webDAV server as I am, be sure to use the IP address rather than the domain name when specifying the location of the server.

With all the issues you describe, I would search for something conflicting with Mountain Lion.
Have you booted into Safe Mode and checked to see if it works correctly there? It will take a while to boot, and it will run a bit slow, so just look for the issues you described above. If they don't appear, you've got something installed that is causing the issues.

Acrobat 9.0 Shared Review COMMENTS VANISH MYSTERIOUSLY

Has anyone had a problem with comments created on one day simply vanishing the next?
Windows XP 2002 SP1
Acrobat 9 Pro
Acrobat Reader 9
Acrobat 8 Standard
How we start the review:
We use Acrobat 9 Pro to create a manual shared review. This creates a review pdf in the same shared network directory as the original pdf. (I saw in an Acrobat 8 entry that this may not be good practice.) In Windows explorer, we create a shortcut file from the review file. Then we drag the shortcut file into a new Lotus Notes database that we created for storing and organizing links, and to send auto-notifications at different review milestones. We used to send the link via Notes mail, but users lose them. Users then launch the shortcut, which opens the review file. Sometimes we, the review creators open files directly from Tracker.
The problem...
occurs after a day or two. After creating comments, at least two of the reviewers opened the document the following day, but the comments had disappeared. I watched one reviewer open the document. The "Welcome Back" window listed the reviewers and showed the normal new/total comments. After a few seconds, THE TOTAL COMMENTS FOR ONE REVIEWER RESET TO ZERO as we watched. The comments were not in the review file. It seems that comments are normally stored inside the review files instead of in auxiliary .fdf files as they once were, or in .xml files as I saw in a recent example with Acrobat 9 on a review I restarted.
A possibly related problem occurs sometimes when trying to close a file, even when no comments are added: A message states that there are unpublished comments and offers a publish, delete, cancel, and one other button. After clicking publish, another messages states that the file is locked. This is an endless loop and Acrobat will not close without going to the Task Manager.
I also submitted this as a bug report to Adobe. Has anyone found a solution? Need help. Reviewers are losing hours of work.
Thanks,
Phil

Hi Vikas,
We began saving the files locally and this seemed to sort out the confusion with comments disappearing and reappearing, etc.
There are still some rough spots you may be interested in -
1. My teammate, Russ initiated a file and sent me the link (which is a Windows shortcut file with a path to the shared document). I opened the link and the shared file opened. However I was not prompted to save it immediately as you described in step 5 above. The save prompt only appears when closing the file. So, when the user first starts working on the file it is on the shared copy.
2. While the file was still open the first time, I created a couple of comments and clicked publish. A message appeared that I had not seen before: "1 published - 1 queued." I could still add comments, but the publish button did not become active and the check button did not respond. It was like the check/publish functions locked up but not the rest of the program. I was able to save the file locally. When I reopened the local file, the check message said 3 messages were being added (Russ published these) checking again deleted the comments, then checking again restored them. Since then, as long as we opened the local versions, commenting seemed to function normally. The key here is that opening the local copy is not enforced by the program. The program relies on users to function a certain way and does not inform them of the consequences. If Reader or Tracker knew whether a bona fide local copy existed and warned if an attempt to open the network copy was made, many of these issues would go away.
3. Some other concerns:
a. When a link is sent to users, there is no guarantee that they will only use it once and discard it. If they don't discard it, they will continually open the shared doc, not the local copy. When our users get busy, they take the path of least resistance, which is to find the original link and open it, rather than hunting down a file to open. In Acrobat 6 this was never a problem. Users always linked to the shared document; each user's comments were stored in outboard files (fdf) the integrity of the shared doc and users comments was never in question. We did hundreds of documents this way. Of course, everyone had 6 Standard or higher, not reader.
b. When closing the document, Acrobat prompts to save the file. Clicking Save produces a Save AS window each time. Shouldn't this be a Save box? When users enter and close a document multiple times they must stop and decide whether to overwrite the file each time. Conversely, if there are unpublished comments and you try to close, there is a Save Draft button, which seems to save over the local file without asking. This seems backwards. If I'm editing an Indesign document and I click save, it just saves. If I want to save a variation, I click Save AS. (FYI, on my pc, Acrobat prompted to save the file in C:\temp; on Russ's pc, it prompted for \MyDocuments.)
c. Tracker is not as easy to find as other Acrobat functions. I could not find a Tracker button to add to the toolbar. I believe that if Tracker could be selected to turn on at program start (or even start as a separate program), the users would more likely open the correct (local) file. All that users would be required to know is Start Acrobat, read links. The link they need would be visible immediately.
I hope this gives you our perspective in the spirit of improving the product.

Shared Review comment server setup issues

I've been having some issues setting up a comment server/repository for Shared Reviews in Acrobat 8 (for our all-Mac network). I've done extensive research on how to set up a Network Folder and a WebDAV folder (since those are the only two supported methods in Acrobat 8).
- For the Network Folder setup, I created a folder on one of the machines on our network and shared it using SMB. When specifying that location (using smb://IPAddress/Folder/), Acrobat either 1) brings up a login screen, into which I enter the proper credentials, and after pressing OK, it says the connection could not be made, or 2) it verifies the shared folder location, but when I make comments and then choose Publish Comments, a red box appears saying something to the effect of "cannot access IPAddress, will keep trying."
- I also tried using WebDAV. Solutions I found online mostly consisted of using the Terminal to access system files and entering numerous lines of code. I pretty much had to learn about WebDAV from scratch today in order to get the Shared Reviews process set up, but I feel like there is something I'm missing regording its implementation.
I suppose this post can be boiled down to three questions:
1) What is the best way to set up a Shared Review system, and how can it be done in the simplest manner possible?
2) What am I missing from my knowledge of Network Folders and WebDAV folders in this regard?
3) Would functionality be benefited by simply upgrading to Acrobat X?
Thank you all in advance for your responses and help. If there is any more information required in order to provide a solution, please let me know.

The roundcube db schema needs to setup manually. See /usr/share/webapps/roundcube/INSTALL
Also, from your /etc/webapps/postfixadmin/config.inc.php:
$CONF['domain_path'] = 'NO';
$CONF['domain_in_mailbox'] = 'YES';
$CONF['maildir_name_hook'] = 'NO';
..which results in /var/mail/vmail/[email protected]
From your dovecot.conf
mail_home = /var/mail/vmail/%d/%u
...which results in /var/mail/vmail/domain.com/user
That doesn't fit together.

Comment deletion in shared review

I am trying to use Adobe's shared review feature to have multiple reviewers for a PDF document. We've noticed that if you delete a comment, then when you reply to another comment the reply sometimes gets associated with the wrong comment. It's as if the deleted comment is somehow being still counted, so the matching is off.
I can't find anything about this issue. Does anyone know anything about it?

The User (identified by his credentials) has the right to delete his own comments/replies only. If in your case, a different user is able to delete other user's comments, then it requires attention. For this, Please share the Acrobat and OS version you are using and in which category of shared review you are experiencing this. Thanks.

Dynamic Stamp Reviewer Name Changes upon Comment Download from Shared Review

When reviewers publish their dynamic stamp to an active Shared Review and I join the review, it downloads their comments (including the dynamic stamp) but when it downloads to my copy, the name on the stamp changes from their profile name to my profile name. If I double-click on the stamp, the reviewer's name shows up on the comment pop-up yet my profile name remains on the stamp image.
I've dug around in the forum and have found no information about this problem. Does anyone out there have a fix for this or have you seen this problem as well?
It happens whether the review is initiated and stored in a network server directory, or using a SharePoint workspace.
No matter who has initiated the review, the renamed stamp appears in other participants' review copies. This was not happening at all before (we have been using Shared Review since 2012).
It just started happening and it is occurring to others at our company as well. Initiating from different versions of Acrobat (ranging from Acrobat 9 to Acrobat 10) results in the same problem.
Some reviewers' names are showing correctly and some are replaced with the user's name. See below.
Below you can see the first approved stamp name (and time stamp) is different than the pop-up.
The second is the same as the reviewer.

I don't have the answer but I've seen the same thing, only with it twist. It seems to be related to the disappearing comments that others are talking about.
We use the dynamic stamps just as you do and for certain users, the stamps disappear when the review file is opened again, no matter who opens it. You can see then listed as having added comments as the file is opening but no stamps are showing, and they aren't listed in the comments window once the file is open.
But we have one user who DOES see the stamps - except that they have his name instead of the user that actually stamped it! So for some users, there's no problem - they stamp the file and everyone sees it fine. For others, the stamp disappears whenever anyone except that one user opens it, and he sees his own name on them. We all use Acrobat X except this one user, who's still on Acrobat 9.
This all started recently and the number of affected users seems to be increasing. I firmly believe that it's related to recent updates that have been sent out, though I can't prove it. Not sure why else the problem would just start happening, and not to every user.
This is a serious problem that needs to be fixed!

How can I see shared review comments in a PDF when connected to a SharePoint server over a VPN?

I am using Acrobat Pro XI on Windows 7.
When I issue a shared review, hosted on our work SharePoint server, I always encounter problems when accessing my work network from home, over a VPN. My comments do not get published, and I cannot see comments that reviewers have published.
I issue the review PDF as an attachment when I open the review, and all reviewers save a local copy of this file. When I open the PDF, the "Welcome back to shared review..." screen is never updated with the number of comments. The server status always seems to show green, but the comment reporting mechanisms do not behave as they do at work. When I click Publish comments, I am usually asked if I wish to take ownership of unpublished comments by other reviewers (to which I click No). When I return to the office, everything seems to "just work" again. But this is hugely inconvenient if I am out of office for days on end.
I had this problem with my previous version of Acrobat, and no satisfactory solution was ever reached. I am most dismayed to find it is still present in version XI.
Please can anyone advise?

I don't know if you solved this issue yet. But we have the same issue in the pass, and clean the log files under "\Synchronizer\resources\" folder seems to be a solution. Here is the thread talking about it.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1426298?start=0&tstart=0

Unable to see other writer's checked check boxes in comments of shared review

I'm using Acrobat 3D Version 8 in a Windows XP environment. We are using SharePoint for shared reviews.
We are able to see developer's comments, and we can respond back to the comments with a reply. However, when we use the checkbox to indicate that a comment has been addressed, each writer can only see the checkmarks that she makes. We cannot see checkmarks made by other writers.
We have tried selecting the check box, and we have also used the check box icon to select the check box. We then publish and the the action is accepted as a comment and is published. But we are unable to see each other's check boxes.
Why?
Thanks!

Solved on my own.
Simply close BEx Analyzer and restart it again. If still it doesn't work then restart your computer and then run BEx Analyzer again, it will definitely work.
TR.

Shared Review: Can't Check for New Comments or Publish Comments

I am having a problem with a network file share (SMB) Shared Review. I am not able to Check for New Comments or Publish Comments. When I click those buttons all I get is the green circle continuously spinning forever. Other members of my team are able to check for and post new comments. I am able to connect to the SMB file share outside of Acrobat just fine. I am using Acrobat Pro XI with the latest update 11.0.03.

Try the following steps :
1. Keep the review file closed and remove the review enty from the Tracker. For this "Go to View->Tracker. Choose the review file under the Review->Joined node and from right click options choose 'Remove review from Tracker'."
Note: Do not remove the reviews which you had initiated i.e. those under Sent node. Otherwise, the review will removed from the server also.
Alternatively, you can delete the Collab and Synchronizer folder from the following location:
/users/+username+/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/+version+/
2. Sign out from Adobe.com comment. For this "Go to Preferences->Adobe Online Services". and click sign out.
3. Now open the review PDF again and login with the correct credentials.
Hope, this will resolve your issue.

Add customized tags on shared review comments

Hi,
We have been using shared review to do our document review heavily. Recently I got a request from our stakeholder to add customized tags so we can assign comments in different categories.
Is it doable with some customization effort? I did some research online and found out Acrobat XI supports customization Wizard and for earlier version (we are on Pro 9), you can do customization using JavaScript, but it's not clear to me if these customization efforts can be applied on shared review PDF, or it's just on regular PDF.
Does anyone have experience on Acrobat customization? Any thought or information will be appreciated.
Thanks,
-Yunju

Hi Ajlan,
Thanks for the answer. I also found out about the customization wizard later. Now I'm researching how to use the wizard and deploy the customization feature we desire.
Here are the things we want to do:
- Creating customized menu so we can assign comments to different categories, something like set the comment status
- Modify the workflow. Instead of asking reviewer to "connect" or "cancel" when they first open the PDF, we can to only show "connect"
I also have couple of questions about the wizard:
1. Are the features I describe above can be done through wizard?
2. If we deploy the changes using Acrobat 9 + wizard, will users with all version Acrobat/Reader see the same end result and preform regular shared review operations without problem?
Thanks for the answer.
-Yunju

Problems publishing shared review comments in Acrobat 8.0

I created a shared review in Acrobat 8.0 and posted it to a Sharepoint workspace. A reviewer published comments but I was not able to see them. He double-checked, and he was able to see his comments but I was still unable to see them. He checked again, and was not able to see his comments.
I can see comments the reviewer published on a different date, but the reviewer is no longer able to see those comments either. Has anyone had a similar experience?

I'm having a similar problem and didn't see a solution posted.
I'm using Acrobat 8 Professional to do shared document reviews. I created a sharepoint shared documents folder which the shared document review process verified and accepted as a destination.
I used the Review and Comment process to save the pdf document to the folder (enabling those using Reader to review and comment) and send an email inviting specific individuals to review and comment.
The problem is when they open the document (using the URL in the email) they don't see the "toolbar" that lets them Publish Comments to Server. They all have Reader 9.
Until I figure out what the problem is, I'm using a brute force technique to force publishing comments, instructing them to close the browser and then Publish Comments using the dialog box that appears after the browser has closed.
Any suggestions how to get the toolbar that lets them look for published comments and publish their comments to display ?

Shared Review Comments not Saving

My System
Acrobat 10.0.0
Win 7 64 bit
Hello everyone for some reason my system is not properly uploading my comments on a shared review. When I create a comment and select publish comments it shows a message that it was published but it doesnt. Has anyone ver heard of this happening and have any idea on how to fix it.
Just as a side note my disributed forms seem to work fine, it just the shared review.

I have tried sending rieviews through a sharepoint server, and a network and as for the file both linked or attached. This is the case for both reviews I post or someone else, even when others are commenting without any problems.

Missing commenting toolbar in Shared Review

We have a situation with a shared review where one particular reviewer has different results with respect to seeing the comment toolbar depending on which initiator has processed the review file. This explanation is lengthy, but necessary for proper understanding of the whole picture. Everyone participating in this scenario are using Windows 7.
A document owner sent a pdf created from a Word document to a review initiator. There are two review initiators (both using Acrobat Pro 10.1.4); we’ll call them initiator-1 and initiator-2. Each initiator has a network site defined for holding the review comments; we’ll call them drive-1 and drive-2. Because the reviews need to have participants both inside and outside of our organization we switch the Identity in Acrobat Preferences to the document owner’s name and email address before setting up the shared review. That enables Acrobat to generate an email for external participants who cannot publish their comments to our internal server to get the pdf back to the owner.
Initiator-1 opened the pdf, switched the identity to the doc owner, set up a shared review on drive-1, and then sent the “test-1_review.pdf” file to initiator-2, the document owner, and another reviewer.
Intitiator-2 (using Acrobat Pro 10.1.4) and the other reviewer (using Reader 10.1.4) open the review file and see the normal commenting toolbar. The document owner (using Reader) cannot see the commenting tools at all. In previous reviews this doc owner has been able to see and use all commenting tools with pdf files created by initiator-2 using drive-2 as the network share.
In an effort to troubleshoot the problem, initiator-2 uses the same original pdf file (with a slight name change to distinguish files), switches identities in Preferences to the doc owner, sets up a shared review on drive-2, and sends “test-2_review.pdf” to the document owner and the other reviewer. This time the document owner sees commenting tools as normal.
Thinking this outcome points to something different on the network drive, intiator-2 goes through the process again, this time using drive-1 as the comment repository. The document owner opens the file and sees all commenting tools.
As a troubleshooting step, the document owner uninstalls Reader and Java, reinstalls both, reboots, and tries opening the review file again. Same results: no commenting tools.
Knowing that users with Acrobat seldom have problems with commenting toolbars, the doc owner downloads the trial version of Acrobat from the Adobe site. Upon opening the review pdf, the document owner sees the comment tools as normal.
While using the Acrobat trial version is a temporary solution the document owner does not want to spend the money on the real version. Although we have not tested the process with other document owners, it is possible that others will experience the same trouble and the expense would be too great to get everyone Acrobat.
Any ideas what may be causing this? We need to have initiator-1 be able to use drive-1 to handle the process for her group.

I believe this is occuring because you're changing the identity to the document owner and then sending for shared review and Acrobat is keeping tabs on who initiated the shared review. Then, this same individual is opening the file in Reader, which is causing confusion. If you're concerned about how to send to external participants, all you need to do is start a shared review and then attached the shared review pdf to an email message for the external participants. They will receive the PDF and be able to return their comments via email since they cannot publish their comments to the server.

Shared review requirements - comments disappearing

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