In Preview, when I add text annotations to my PDF (lecture note slides), they look fine until I close it and reopen it, and then they are rotated 90 degrees. How do I fix this and keep it from happening again?

I had this problem as well.

As a solution I've used some tips from this forum to help fix it as best as i could.

I first went to View>Contactsheet so that i can see all of my slides. Then i command A (select all) to select all my slides and i rotated them to the right or left so that you would be reading it sideways. When i closed out of preview and reopened the pdfs, the text annotations were rotated as so that i could see them normally, if it didn't rotate to my liking i just did the same steps until they were back to normal when i opened it.

once they were the way i liked it i selected all slides in contact sheet, rotated it to normal so that i everything was back in place including the annotations and then i exported as pdf and replaced my old one.

Hasn't had the issue again yet.

Hope this helps

Just out of courisity, when you first open your lecture notes, do you have to rotate them 90º first?

If so, after your do that rotation, Save the document, and then do your annotations.

Don't know if that'll work or not, but it's the best I've got!

Thta's a shame. Mine did work fine for a while before going strange. I've installed Wondershare PDF Editor and wondered if that was the cause of the problem due to a conflict somewhere. You haven't installed that too have you? If so, it would point to that being the problem.

hmm. I just had the same problem, so i googled and got here. With no answers i went back to Preview and tried a couple of attempts again... and i realised i could do this!

File>Export> save.

and it seems to work alright now. Solved it!...for now. (:

I'm having the same problem and, like you, I discovered that if I double click on the note, it will resolve itself. After I do this for each of the notes, I then go to file > export > save (as suggested by alwaesboo). It's tedious but I can't figure out another way to fix this. 😟

This problem is stil happening.

The same deal, using for lecture notes, but all flipped when re-opened.

This can be remedied temporarily by double clicking (edit mode) or resizing the text box, but is only temporary.

Same on snow leopard, lion and now mountain lion.

Fix, thanks.

I'm having the same problem. Also if the text box is larger than the amount of text in the box then when it rotates the text isn't visible and I'm stuck clicking on random parts of my lecture slides hoping the text box will come back. This is insanely frustrating when I make hundreds of text boxes in lecture notes over the course of a few hours and can't find half of them.

Please fix!

I have the same problem with lectures slides.

Furthermore, sometimes the text box, when doube-clicking, turns the text into a one-liner. Causing the text box to sometimes get 3. times wider than the pdf itself.

tcrother wrote:

... then when it rotates the text isn't visible and I'm stuck clicking on random parts of my lecture slides hoping the text box will come back. ...

By pressing [cmd + I] the Inspector opens up and clicking on the rightmost tab 'Annotations' you should be able find those Annotations again. I do this regularly to find the empty annotations I accidentally create while clicking through slides.

I had the exact same problem. what I do is open the pdf in the dropbox viewer on my ipad, and then it shows you where your textboxes are located(they appear as red boxes). I guess the annotated pdf from mac 'preview' is not 100% compatible with other viewers, and because of that other viewers let us know where the textboxes are located.

This is really frustrating,, Apple please fix this ASAP!!!

I used to have the exact same problem.

Are all of you using dropbox? A lot of people in my class have this problem, and they all use dropbox. The ones that dont have this problem are not using dropbox (but they might be using older versions of preview as well...)

This solves the problem for me:

1. Quit dropbox when taking notes

2. Every time i open a new pdf i duplicate it (and rename it) in preview and use the new file instead

I have not had a single problem after I began doing this

2 years after, still the same bug.... in Yosemite.

Apple, do you see my 3000$ for the next mac? Look carefully, because you won't have them. You will never get 1$ more from me. NEVER.

For those you have still this issue, you can use Skim. Their developpers FIX bugs at least.

Hi, the only solution I've found thus far is:

1. Start with a fresh / newly downloaded pdf (I'm a student so this is what I'm typically working with)

2. Open pdf in preview, save it, then close it

3. Open pdf again and make your notes- the annotations will not rotate upon reopening the next time

This is not an acceptable solution to something that shouldn't be a problem in the first place, but in the chance that it helps people's workflows I thought I would share it.

I'm also having problems with this. As of now It seems that there is no clear reason for this problem. But it happens after I add notes and save the pdf, and quit then when reopening the pdf the annotations are rotated.

I'm switched to using skim till this problem is resolved.

If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, I found that if you rotate pages there, they will show up properly in Preview. My guess is that Preview (and Keynote and others) only add a rotation in the metadata of the page, while Acrobot actually rotates the entire page and reverses the dimensions.

Even if you've already saved your Preview annotations, this will still work. Acrobat will rotate the page properly and the next time you open the document in Preview, your annotations should line up where you intended.

If you do not have Acrobat Pro, perhaps other PDF editing software will work.