Preview shows deletions but not insertions, and incomplete notes

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Level 1

34 points

Preview shows deletions but not insertions, and incomplete notes

I am trying to use Preview (Version 11.0 (1018.2)) to view a PDF with markup in the form of deletions, insertions, and notes. If I enable View > Highlights and Notes, it shows deletions, but not the inserted text. Double-clicking on the insertion points does nothing.

The markup was created using Adobe Acrobat Reader DC.

Also, it doesn't include the complete text for notes.

Has Preview lost this basic capability? Is there something I'm missing here?

Mac mini, macOS 11.1

Posted on Dec 30, 2021 12:49 PM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

Level 10

122,102 points

Dec 31, 2021 1:22 PM in response to David Weiss

Nobody here can do anything about how Preview renders Adobe annotations.

Do you see the same thing when you annotate with Preview? Preview has nothing that will create an annotation like those, so the ability to display them even partially seems like a win to me.

Those appear to be edits with something equivalent to Track Changes enabled. The red lines and carets are annotations, but the text has been edited in Acrobat. Preview cannot do that. All it can do is put another text box over the top of text, maybe with a white background to obscure the underlying text. Preview is not a replacement for Acrobat or Acrobat Reader. For most of us, it works just fine as all we want to do is view a PDF, maybe put a comment on it. If you need that amount of compatibility, you should use Acrobat Reader.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,102 points

Dec 31, 2021 3:06 AM in response to David Weiss

Preview is not a PDF editor, so I wouldn’t expect to see edits of the actual text. It should be showing the final version of the text as edited by an actual editor like Acrobat. Does it not show the text as it was set by Acrobat? Or, are these annotations, not edits.

Preview can only add annotations on top of the document, not alter the document. I don’t know how to have it show any editing history.

If you think Preview should show edits to the original PDF, you’d have to send feedback to Apple.

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Answer 3

David Weiss Author

Level 1

34 points

Dec 31, 2021 12:17 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks Barney-15E -- Happy New Year! -- these are annotations, not actual edits. But they're being inconsistently and incompletely rendered. Attaching a screenshot here.

Notice that all of the deletions (as marked in the text by red strikethrough) are listed to the left under Highlights and Notes, but none of the insertions (as marked in the text by blue carets). For example look at the last edit for Page 1, changing 2021 to 2022. Under Highlights and Notes, the deleted 1 is listed, but not the inserted 2.

Also, notice how the note doesn't support displaying the full text; it only seems to support one line of text.

Any ideas?

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Answer 4

David Weiss Author

Level 1

34 points

Dec 31, 2021 3:15 PM in response to Barney-15E

Ok. I understand the limitations of the way things are. Thing is, we used to be able to read all changes just fine in Preview, and now we can't. The inserted text is just another layer of annotation information that Preview used to capture, similar to the "marked for deletion" text, but now it doesn't.

Now, I'll have to be sure to use Adobe readers for all of this kind of work, and I'll have to tell all the graphic designers I work with to do the same. It's not ideal, but it's just an extra step I'll have to take, and I'll take it.

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Preview shows deletions but not insertions, and incomplete notes

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