automator extract pdf annotations not working

Automator "extract pdf annotations" is still not working on Mojave 10.14.3 (18D42)


All we still get is a list of the annotations are in the document, not the annotation texts themselves.


Having searched the web, and this site, Apple does not seem to care!

Another deprecated function or is there a solution I haven't found?






MacBook Air 13", 10.14

Posted on Jan 29, 2019 5:09 AM

Reply
4 replies

Jan 29, 2019 9:40 AM in response to ian.reid

Using the Automator Extract PDF Annotations action, I can get the text box ('/FreeText') contents returned, but it is sending back blank content for the one line of highlighted text in my test PDF. Changing the Highlight color makes no difference in the outcome.


So, I wrote a short Python/Objective-C application that sees the annotation type '/Highlight', and the PDF coordinates of that highlighted text content, but it refuses to return any highlighted text content using two different approaches:


  1. Directly asking for all content types.
  2. Testing for the annotation type of '/Highlight' and then telling it to return the annotation found at its coordinates in the PDF.


So, I can only deduce that there is either a bug in the PDFKit framework that causes Highlighted text to be ignored during a request for all text annotation, or I have overlooked some other programming angle to get at this highlighted text.


Short of submitting a bug report to Apple (which someone may have already done), there is nothing we as fellow users can do about this annotation extraction limitation.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

automator extract pdf annotations not working

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.