What happened to my sticky notes in preview?

Question

Level 2

198 points

What happened to my sticky notes in preview?

I spent a lot of time adding comments to a pdf file. I used Preview. Now when I go to the document, all of the yellow squares are there, but there is no content inside. In fact, when I double click on the sticky notes, the boxes don't even open. But if I click on Annotate in the toolbar and click on the yellow box, it opens, but it's blank.

I put in a lot of work on the two documents and now it's all gone. It's the first time I've ever tried doing comments in Preview (I've always used Adobe Reader and never had a problem. I've been trying to stick with the Mac OS tools instead of downloading readers and such, but now I'm having second thoughts about this.

Normally I would do tracking in Word for comments/corrections like this, but I had to work with a pdf because the original document was generated in Pages and I can't seem to open Pages.

Are my comments lost forever?

Posted on Mar 30, 2015 5:16 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Jul 11, 2017 7:46 AM in response to time8230

Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions. These are mostly user to user discussions.

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem or a suggestion for change. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem/suggested change solved sooner.

Feedback

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Answer 2

BumperC

Level 1

4 points

Dec 3, 2017 9:20 PM in response to susanmcm

I had the same issue for my class notes. I was able to restore by going to file then revert to and went to the day I created my notes and restored that. It brought all my notes back from what I can tell. Hope this helps!

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Answer 3

Dec 10, 2017 1:52 AM in response to susanmcm

I had the same problem and noticed that if you double click the notes and then click the slide/page randomly somewhere else, the note appears in the lower left hand corner of the page.. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes I just see it flashing but can't get it to stay (or read it fast enough).. This is only half a solution and only randomly works with some notes, others I can't get to show up. Not really a solution but it does imply that the notes are still saved in the document somewhere..

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Answer 4

Dec 10, 2017 8:51 AM in response to Nicolas_3

That's exactly what happens to my notes. I tried to restore the content like suggested above but some notes were still gone and some that did get the information back would appear in the bottom corner of my screen where I could barely read it after double-clicking on it. I would really like this to be fixed!

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Answer 5

Jan 16, 2018 7:06 AM in response to susanmcm

I recently experienced the same heart-stopping situation, in which PDF "notes" I had annotated with a colleague over 3 hours suddenly appeared Empty when I was going to email the file hours later!

After trying numerous tricks, I downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader, and opened the same saved PDF file that showed blanks notes in Preview.app, and alas all the comments were there!

If you re-save the file using Adobe Acrobat, then even Preview now shows the Notes/Comments properly and as expected.

This indicates that Preview's Save function (or the Notes widget) is causing the issue.

I probably won't ever annotate in Preview.app again!

Preview version 10.0 (944.4) on macOS 10.13.2 "High Sierra".

I filed a bug report and the solution.

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Answer 6

susanmcm Author

Level 2

198 points

Feb 25, 2018 2:22 PM in response to mimsybags

I see that I have gotten multiple replies. Thanks everyone. For some reason, I wasn't alerted when your suggestions appeared. Since I originally posted my question, I think I started performing most pdf tasks using Acrobat and that solved my problems too. It's been a while so I can't recall exactly. I DO know that sometimes I still get sticky notes on pdfs from clients and SOME of the notes appear in Preview while others just appear as red outlines around certain words. It took me a while to realize there was actually a sticky note hiding there. When I see those red outlines now, I immediately open the document in Acrobat and all of the notes are visible. Thanks so much for helping.

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Answer 7

Pitiger

Level 1

47 points

Mar 23, 2018 6:08 AM in response to susanmcm

It is 23 March 2018 and I just had the same problem. The content of all my notes in a PDF file which were there yesterday are not gone today. This is not acceptable. I opened the PDF on Windows and I can see the notes, fortunately. Is there a fix for this? It should have been fixed already!!! I google it and the same problem has been experienced by others a year ago or longer than that!

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Answer 8

susanmcm Author

Level 2

198 points

Mar 23, 2018 6:29 AM in response to Pitiger

Sorry you’re having this issue. The good news is that your data is probably still there. Try opening the document in the free Acrobat Reader program. The notes may appear just fine. It’s not a fix, per se, but it could save you from having to recreate your notes from scratch. Hope this helps.

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Answer 9

Mar 23, 2018 10:18 AM in response to susanmcm

Hi

The same happened to me. The person I sent the pdf to with the sticky notes said only half had the comments. I went back and remade the notes saving as I went and checking they were there. I then closed the document but when I went back again half were empty and some were missing totally.

Help

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Answer 10

Lou204

Level 1

0 points

Mar 31, 2015 4:09 AM in response to susanmcm

OMG I just had the exact same thing! I put in hours and hours of work adding comments to a pdf, and sent my file to the designer. Nope, nothing there!! I'm losing it here..... :-( I saved my document by exporting it - I have no idea how otherwise to save documents in Preview. the feature 'save as' seems to be missing. How did you save yours? Well even if they are indeed lost, it is good to know I'm not the only one......

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Answer 11

Jeff Shenk

Level 4

2,993 points

Mar 31, 2015 8:52 AM in response to Lou204

I just tried Save As… (hold the Option key while checking the File menu) and the notes i had added were preserved.

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Answer 12

susanmcm Author

Level 2

198 points

Mar 31, 2015 11:06 AM in response to Lou204

Yes, I exported it as a pdf because it was the only available option. Sorry you lost your stuff. I feel your pain.

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Answer 13

susanmcm Author

Level 2

198 points

Mar 31, 2015 11:13 AM in response to Jeff Shenk

Good to know. Thanks for replying. It would never have occurred to me to press the option key. Seems weird that they "hid" the solution when it would've been so easy to just include it in the regular menu as they do in all other programs. Equally weird that the Export as PDF function isn't working (it saves the little yellow boxes, but erases their contents).

Jeff, I really appreciate your response. I'm going to make a note of it so I can remember it for futures.

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Answer 14

time8230

Level 1

4 points

Jul 10, 2017 9:19 PM in response to susanmcm

This happened to me too. I spent hours on the comments. The suggestions did not help me in particular. Apple, you guys really have to fix this.

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Answer 15

Nov 16, 2017 5:29 PM in response to susanmcm

UGH the same thing just happened to me. My professors use PDFs for their lectures so I use sticky notes to take notes on the page and today I went to study and half of the notes are empty!!

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