Whats the deal with iPad and PDF Annotation?

[email68]

I have a PDF that I marked up using Preview on my mac. After I transferred it to my iPad all the annotations are missing when I look at it in goodreader.

I emailed it to myself and the markups are missing in emails view as well.

Are there any viewers that will allow markups to be viewed on the iPad?

 

[iRabbit]

iAnnotate maybe? ...though I honestly haven't tried it...

 

[email68]

iAnnotate maybe? ...though I honestly haven't tried it...

Thanks. Actually that is a different question.

I'm not asking how to annotate a PDF on the iPad. I'm asking why when I view a PDF that has been annotated either on the mac with Preview or on the iPad iAnnotate, when you view it on the iPad in goodreader or the mail app, the markups are missing?

In addition if you view a markedup PDF that you annotated on the Mac in iAnnotate, the markups are missing as well.

 

[iRabbit]

I understood what you were asking... I was just wondering if iAnnotate will SHOW the annotations from, say, Adobe Acrobat Pro. I haven't tried it yet myself. If you have iAnnotate, you could tried it.

 

[email68]

I understood what you were asking... I was just wondering if iAnnotate will SHOW the annotations from, say, Adobe Acrobat Pro. I haven't tried it yet myself. If you have iAnnotate, you could tried it.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I did try that and it's a no go.

 

[ShiftyGray]

I e-mailed the people of GoodReader the other day and asked them if they will add an annotation/highlight feature sometime in the future and they replied with a Yes.

Of course I don't know if that will make Preview annotations visible..

 

[email68]

I'm guessing the markups are on a different layer or something that the iPad ignores.

I tried an experiment by printing to pdf thinking it would merge the markups to the page and it did. My markups are now viewable on the iPad.

Of course this is not ideal since that locks it down for future editing.

 

[iRabbit]

First, iAnnotate has an update, so get it.

With this update, I made annotations in iAnnotate and when I synced the PDF to mac I was able to see the annotations in both Preview and Adobe Pro.

Also, I took a different PDF and made some annotations in Adobe Pro (on my mac obviously)... Then synced it to my iPad. In iAnnotate I could now see them.

iAnnotate will now open from email directly and sync PDFs in iTunes.

I didn't go further than that, but I suggest you do some testing yourself.

 

[TraceyS/FL]

First, iAnnotate has an update, so get it.

They have a price update too.

I'd been pondering it at the intro price still, and now I will just keep pondering.

But glad to hear the annotations show now elsewhere. Gee, i'da been irked because I would have needed that part of it, and only that part!

 

[email68]

First, iAnnotate has an update, so get it.....

I didn't go further than that, but I suggest you do some testing yourself.

I did the testing. Like I said earlier. I did get the iAnnotate update already before my testing.

When you open a pdf that you marked up in Preview on the Mac, on the iPad the markups are missing. It does not matter if you opened it in iAnnotate, Goodreader, or mail.

If you open up a pdf that was marked up in iAnnotate in Goodreader or the mail app, the markups are missing.

Just an observation. You may cease your testing

 

[ajidev]

I did the testing. Like I said earlier. I did get the iAnnotate update already before my testing.

When you open a pdf that you marked up in Preview on the Mac, on the iPad the markups are missing. It does not matter if you opened it in iAnnotate, Goodreader, or mail.

If you open up a pdf that was marked up in iAnnotate in Goodreader or the mail app, the markups are missing.

Just an observation. You may cease your testing

one of the iAnnotate devs here -- just want to clear up a few things, first that you *should* be able to see all existing annotations in iAnnotate!

if you are/were using version 1.0.x, then they might not have shown depending on how you got the PDF...but if you're using 1.1 (just updated a couple of days ago), then they should definitely show up. if you're updated and they're still not showing, please file a case with our support team (http://www.ajidev.com/support.html) and we'll get on it asap.

the reason for the lack of support in other apps is that PDF annotations are not technically part of the "page content" of PDFs, so they're not displayed when drawing the PDF content. in order to display or interact with them, apps have to dig into the PDF and extract the annotation information, and then have some UI to work with them -- which is why Mail and most other apps don't display annotations.

please feel free to get in touch with our support team (or jump on our user forums http://www.ajidev.com/forum/) if you have any further questions or requests!

jim

 

[tybro0103]

Open in Preview > Print > Save as PDF

I found a method that works for me. Open it in preview. Print the document, but instead of actually printing choose the save to pdf option. The pdf this dialog outputs will show the annotations on iOS devices.