Highlights made in Preview no longer sorted by page number in the sidebar

Question

Level 1

12 points

Highlights made in Preview no longer sorted by page number in the sidebar

Recently, I've noticed that the highlights I made in Preview would appear in a random order in the sidebar (View>Highlights and Notes). This wasn't the case previously.

I contacted support and the staff on the other end sent me this pdf document to test the highlights. As you can see on the sidebar, the highlighted text are arranged in a very random manner. I highlighted the document incrementally (i.e. from page 1 down). So, the highlights are not sorted according to the time I made them.

I seem to recall not facing this issue before performing the update to OS Catalina. Wondering if anyone else faces this issue, or if there is a solution to this.

(Really helps to see my highlights in page order, college student with tons of pdf texts to go through here)

MacBook

Posted on Jan 14, 2020 9:47 PM

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Answer 1

sterling r

Community Specialist

Jan 17, 2020 3:59 PM in response to axisflw2

Hey there axisflw2,

It appears you're having trouble keeping your Highlights & Notes in order in the sidebar while highlighting PDF files. Is that right? I can understand the importance of getting this sorted, especially being a college student.

You mentioned that this seems to happen with multiple PDF files, have you tried testing the issue in and out of safe mode to see if that helps? Safe mode will help clear the system cache, and attempt to repair any directory related issues.

Take a look: Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac

Should the issue continue, it would also be a good idea to test the issue using another user on your Mac. That can help isolate the issue to either the user account, or the Catalina software itself.

This article will help: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

Keep me updated on the results.

Regards.

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Answer 2

jeremy_v

Community Specialist

Jan 21, 2020 8:44 AM in response to axisflw2

axisflw2,

I think this would be an excellent time to take advantage of Apple's feedback form. You can leave feedback for concerns related to macOS using the form I’ve linked below.

macOS - Feedback

Regards.

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Answer 3

axisflw2 Author

Level 1

12 points

Jan 20, 2020 10:31 PM in response to sterling r

Hi there,

I just tried testing in safe mode and it seems the issue still occurs.

I've also tested using another user on my Mac and it's the same. I just realised that there might be a particular order to which the highlights are sorted. But they still remain jumbled up with no way for me to sort them by page number.

Thank you for noticing my issue and replying to me!

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