An efficient workflow for annotating PDFs, extracting highlights and comments, and filing them is essential for research, writing, and studying. Ideally highlights and comments should contain back-links that take you right back to the correct page in the PDF source document.
Adobe’s Acrobat Reader DC, PDF-XChange Editor, and various other PDF readers allow you to annotate PDF files. But, you don’t want these annotations to remain “imprisoned” in your PDF. Your highlights and comments become a lot more useful if you can extract them, aggregate markups from several documents, and re-find them when you need them. Unsurprisingly, the free version of Acrobat Reader doesn’t allow the export of annotations as a word or text file.
To accomplish this in an elegant way, I recommend that you manage your PDF documents in Zotero, a free, open-source research document management system created and maintained by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (George Mason University). With Zotero, you can collect and organize a large variety of document types, including PDF documents and web pages with the click of a few buttons. To extract and manage PDF annotations in Zotero, you additionally need the free add-on Zotfile from zotfile.com. Zotfile was created by Joscha Legewie, a professor at New York University. A big thank you to Dr. Legewie for programming and maintaining this excellent cannot-live-without add-on!
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Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader DC is the most popular PDF reader; it is available on all major platforms, and allows you to highlight and annotate PDF documents. Consequently, in this post I am focusing on Acrobat Reader DC.
You can, however, use any PDF reader that includes annotating tools. My personal favorite on Windows PCs is PDF-XChange Editor (formerly Viewer), which does allow text export of annotations, albeit in a less ideal form.
As a PDf sample, I have added the free psychology text book by Openstax College to Zotero.1, 2 This is a massive 750-page book, so it serves as a good test case:
Double-clicking the book title opens the PDF file in Acrobat Reader (or your default PDF viewer). In the following screenshot, I have highlighted a passage and added a comment:
Saving PDF highlights and comments
After I am done with annotating, I save the file back to Zotero, i.e., modify the original book: File->Save brings up this dialog:
Upon saving the file I confirm that I want to overwrite the original file.
Troubleshooting Acrobat Reader DC – how to find and and overwrite a file in its original folder
Previous versions of Acrobat Reader automatically opened the PDF source folder and allowed the user to save the modified PDF document back to its original location, i.e., overwrite the file. If you have trouble saving your file, or are not been taken back to the source folder, you might have to change a setting to re-enable this behavior.3 In Acrobat Reader go to Edit->Preferences and deselect “Show online storage when saving files”:
Save your settings, restart Acrobat Reader, and everything should work smoothly.
Extracting and managing PDF annotations
Back to our Zotero / Zotfile workflow: right-click the modified PDF attachment and select Manage Attachments->Extract Annotations:Zotfile goes to work and inserts a note with the extracted annotations:
Double-click this note to show the annotations:
From the extracted-annotations window, you can directly copy your annotations and paste them into your favorite word processor.
Each annotation also contains a link back to the PDF file in Zotero, together with the page number. Clicking on this link takes your right back to the page where the annotation can be found:
Unfortunately, in Acrobat Reader this only takes you to the right page if the file is not yet open. (In PDF-XChange Viewer, this function also works with currently open files.) If this bothers you, on Windows definitely give PDF-XChange Viewer or its successor PDF-XChange Editor a try.4 The free version might be all you need.
Aggregating annotations from multiple PDF documents
Alternatively, you can also select multiple documents (Ctrl+mouse) and aggregate all selected annotations in one report (Right-click->Generate Report from items):The report can be saved as a web page (e.g., back to Zotero) or copied to Word / your favorite writing software:
Is setting up Zotero and Zotfile worth the effort if you only want to export annotations? If you are regularly annotating PDFs, my answer is a clear Yes! The time savings for managing and finding your annotations will easily compensate for the initial setup effort.
In a future post, we are going to look at including iPads and Androids in the workflow and other options for extracting highlights and comments from PDF documents.
This concludes part 1 of creating, extracting and managing PDF annotations. I hope you have found it useful. Have a great day!
Notes:
“About OpenStax College,” OpenStax College, accessed April 18, 2016, http://openstaxcollege.org. OpenStax College is an initiative of Rice University, providing a great selection of free, peer-reviewed college-level text books.
Rose M Spielman et al., Psychology (OpenStax College, 2014), http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/psychology.
Richil, “‘save As’ pop up Box Does Not Allow Me to Save the Document.,” accessed April 18, 2016, https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1815625?start=0&tstart=0. Hat tip to Richil for finding this elegant solution.
Tracker Software, “Tracker Software Products :: PDF-XChange Editor,” accessed April 20, 2016, http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor. PDF-XChange Editor has superseded PDF-XChange Viewer. If you want the free version, download PDF-XChange Editor standard. The setup includes the option to install the free version, which includes the annotation tools.
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From Tracker Software Products:
PDF-XChange Editor (64-bit) is a simple tool to edit your PDF documents. It features full page content editing, PDFRichEdit for RTF support, spell Checker, listen/add audio to PDF pages, selection servers, add application Preferences and Presets options, and Bates numbering. The editor also includes advance features like OCR options, additional Annotation options, abstract file system, and third Party Security Handlers Plug-ins.
read more +
What do you need to know about free software?
PDF-XChange Editor is the successor to the excellent PDF-Change Viewer. Its design has been totally overhauled, making it much clearer and easier to use.
Aside from that, PDF-XChange Viewer boasts all of the same strengths as its predecessor, with editing tools for highlighting, selecting and striking out text. The selection of stamps and commenting functions lets you easily track changes in documents – features sometimes excluded from free PDF readers.
You can also extract or delete entire pages from a long PDF file and embed new content like text, images, blank pages or entire PDF documents.
PDF-XChange Editor is also excellent for converting documents between PDF and Word formats, and even includes an OCR (optical character recognition) for converting scanned documents into editable text.
User experience
PDF-XChange Editor’s installer contains plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer. You might find these handy – they add the editor’s features to PDFs viewed in your web browser – but you can deselect them by choosing the Custom Setup option if you prefer.
Once you’ve started it, the program is very easy to use, whether you prefer a Microsoft Office style ribbon interface (a good choice for touchscreens), or the more traditional system of toolbars and menus.
The only drawback of PDF-XChange Editor’s is the large number of editing tools marked with a shopping cart icon, indicating that they’re only available in the premium version. However, the free software is so generous, this is easy to forgive. Your document will be watermarked if you use a premium tool without buying a license, but PDF-XChange Editor will warn you before this happens.
Pdf Xchange Editor Pro Serial Number
Very few free editors will let you add new content to documents, and this alone is a good reason to make it your new default app for PDFs.
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Overview
The PDF-XChange Editor SDK is our latest and most ambitious product offering to date - allowing 3rd party MS Windows software developers to incorporate Portable Document Format (PDF) creation and manipulation within their own software applications for provision to client End-Users. Providing a wide range of features and functions such as PDF creation and editing, searching, rendering and printing, importing and exporting PDF documents, decoding, viewing and saving images - the possibilities are almost endless and limited only by the developers imagination and creativity. Using your favourite programming environment with the SDK you can create your own application that would be able to work with PDF files and images – easily viewing and editing existing documents, create new ones, etc.
With over 17 years of experience offering solutions to both End Users and Software Developers - specifically for Imaging and PDF file manipulation - few companies have a better pedigree and our PDF-XChange range of products has been satisfying client needs for since 2001, winning the plaudits of developers and client end users alike from the very first product releases.
This document is intended to act as resource for experienced developers and some basic knowledge of the PDF format will be required to fully benefit from the extensive features and functions available. We strongly recommend all developer to use this document in tandem we the PDF reference available freely from Adobe (see Online PDF-Reference) or the latest PDF specification from the ISO standards (for a fee). Please also note this product contains 1000's of functions, methods and properties - all listed here, but documented on varying degree's of detail due to the sheer volume of options and it is not possible to create an online help going into minutia of detail - so we have instead concentrated on those area's likely to be of interest to the majority and will expand as time and demand justifies us doing so. Where this document does not go into detail the Adobe reference document will in many cases act as a viable alternative and thus we have not duplicated - allowing us to concentrate most where we believe help is most needed.
The full PDF-XChange Editor SDK License provides functionality in two specific libraries:
PDF-XChange Core API SDK (soon to be available as a separate SDK at a lesser license fee and replacing our PDF-Tools SDK).
PDF-XChange Editor SDK itself which always includes the license and use of the PDF-XChange Core SDK, as well as the extended functionality of the Editor SDK itself. This is not a replacement for our existing PDF-XChange Viewer SDK (which we will continue to offer - but not extend the functionality of) but is the next generation of our Developer SDK line up.
The PDF-XChange Core API SDK – this library provides all available features to work with files in the PDF format and some additional extensions. Unlike the PDF-XChange Editor SDK this library has no UI layer and just one DLL and requires only one DLL to be redistributed to your client end users, being provided in both 32 and 64 bit versions. The PDFXCoreAPI.x86.dll for 32-bit Windows systems and the PDFXCoreAPI.x64.dll for 64-bit Windows Installations.
The PDF-XChange Editor SDK – itself also includes the entirety of the PDF-XChange Core API SDK functionality and additional layers that provide functionality similar to that of own end-user application (created with this SDK) - the PDF-XChange Editor developers are encouraged to review this application themselves to familiarize themselves with the provided functionality and output. As this SDK has the ability to optionally load any available PDF-XChange Editor plugins (with some possible limitations, dependent on the plugin itself and the plugin authors licensing) the set of features provided by the SDK may be dramatically extended by the use of plugins. Developers can also create their own plug-ins for use by their clients or offer to other 3rd party developers or indeed to our own PDF-XChange Editor End-User clients of which their are many millions, please contact us directly for further information should you wish to create a Plug-In for use by licensed end users of the PDF-XChange Editor.
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This library consists of a single DLL module (again offered in both 32 and 64 bit versions: PDFXEditCore.x86.dll for 32-bit and PDFXEditCore.x64.dll for 64-bit use) and a mandatory resource file named Resources.dat that should always reside in the same folder as the afore mentioned library DLL being distributed.
Please see the diagram below showing the relationship between the PDF-XChange Editor SDK and PDF-XChange Core API SDK and illustrating the internal arrangement and use of the API-layers:
Both of these libraries are developed and offered as COM-servers and provide a set of ActiveX-objects and COM-interfaces which may be accessed via standard COM technology as well as using other methods:
using registration of the COM-server on destination system;
using COM-server via Click-Once technology: the standard registration of the COM-server is not required, however two specific manifest files must be added during installation on a client machine;
using a special function exported by the libraries DLL's, this creates and returns the main object of the libraries; Neither standard registration of the COM-server nor provision of the above manifest files is required when using this method for your application;
For detailed redistribution information please see Redistribution to Clients.
For detailed information regarding licensing please see Licensing.
Installation
The latest release of the SDK is always available from here.The SDK installer will install all required SDK files, and will register the COM-server (either 32 or 64-bit as appropriate for your development system hardware/OS).
Once installed successfully you may immediately begin using of the SDK to create your application in your chosen development tool. In addition, sample projects are provided for various programming languages to assist in familiarizing developers with the use of the SDK and available functionality.
All samples are also available on a github-repository.
The simple guide on how to add the PDF-XChange Editor ActiveX Control to the Windows Form Application can be found here
Development
PDF-XChange Editor SDK provides you access to ActiveX Objects, and consists of several infrastructure API-layers:
Full index of PDF-XChange Editor SDK types : IndexTypeLibrary
Retrieved from 'https://sdkhelp.tracker-software.com/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=50760'
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Comments
commented Jul 9, 2017•
edited
According to the Docear user manual, Selecting a PDF Editor:
We highly recommend PDF-XChange Viewer because it’s the only (free) PDF editor that fully supports all the features that Docear needs. However, please ensure that you download the PDF-XChange Viewer, and not the Editor.
However PDF-XChange Viewer is currently reporting that it is discontinued.
The PDF-XChange Viewer has been discontinued and replaced by the PDF-XChange Editor which is now available including all the features of the Viewer and much, much more. . .
What is now the recommended course of action now for users?
Also, as PDF-XChange only works on Windows, is there a recommended alternative for Mac & Linux?
Edit: Woops, didn't need to ask this, the answer is here: http://www.docear.org/support/user-manual/#Overview
How should the user manual best be updated?
changed the titlePDF-XChange Viewer has been discontinued and replaced by the PDF-XChange EditorJul 9, 2017
commented Mar 13, 2018
Hello there! any answer? I'm using arch linux. Not sure what pdf to use.
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