Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Since updating to El Capitan, the highlights that I apply to PDFs in Preview sometimes move when I save the PDF. Once they move, I cannot put them back. The highlights no longer correspond meaningfully to the text to which they were originally applied (see screenshot below). This makes the PDF be functionally useless.
Does anyone have any idea why this is happening or what I can do about it?
MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)
I am having the same problem. Everything was working fine up until yesterday when highlights started to appear shifted, and the text of my pdf moved lightly up and to the right. This is extremely frustrating, especially if you're working with hundreds of annotated pdf files.
I tried opening the same files with Adobe Acrobat: highlights are not aligned, nor is the text, it is exactly the same problem. So the problem appears to come from the way Preview saves pdf files with annotations.
This morning, I updated from El Capitan to Sierra. The problem is still there, with all my old annotated files. This drives me crazy: there are hundreds of hours of work annotating files.
Is there any fix by Apple? How come such a basic piece of software as Preview is so unstable?
Thanks
Christophe
macOS Sierra 10.12.4 lists the following update: "Resolves several PDF rendering and annotation issues in Preview."
If you are following this thread, I wonder if you could do a before-and-after test. I.e., do 10+ trials of highlighting a PDF in Preview, closing the PDF and reopening it. Then update to 10.12.4 and do 10+ more trials and report your results here.
I hope this update fixes our issues. I wish you all well!
Hi Christopher,
Is the PDF stored only locally or is it syncing with cloud storage (e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)
(I ask because the answer will help rule out non-Apple causes.)
Sorry that you're also experiencing this frustration. I hope we can figure out a solution somehow.
Hi
The pdf files are all stored locally (in subfolders in my Zotero library). And they are not synced with any cloud storage.
The problem therefore appears to be very local. But strangely, it is not systematic: some highlighted pdf are still ok, while others are not. And I have no clue why (but it is not correlated to the amount of highlighting)
I see. Thanks! That's helpful because it rules the possibility of the problem's source being a non-Apple file management problem.
(I was worried about that possibility because all of my PDFs, while stored locally, sync with a cloud service so that they're available on a few different devices).
Did anyone discover what the issue was? Could anyone manage to fix it? Is it possible to recover my original highlights?
I suspect it might have to do with zooming in and out. It happened in pdfs which I zoomed in to read and highlight. After re-opening the pdf, the problem appeared.
I no longer have the previous version, but I opened a very large (nearly 700 pages) pdf, made a few highlights, closed, reopened, added more highlights and so on, on several pages, and it is all working so far.
This is INSANE. I just experienced this problem for the first time--after painstakingly highlighting an important essay. There is no way I am going to go back and re-highlight the whole thing. And, yes, it is stored locally. Not even in Zotero or anything like that.
Has anyone found a way to restore the old highlights?
Also having this issue.... almost two years after the initial post! Wonder why Apple hasn't yet looked into a fix for this.... complacency perhaps. As others on this post have said, let us know if anyone finds a fix or just a better pdf editor to use on Mac.
I was able to reproduce the issue (and other issues: Preview: freezes every time I save and close a window, Finder tags disappear while typing them in (in Preview), and Preview: interpreting links as covering the whole page) on a new user and on a clean install (screenshots attached). So it's either a bug or my computer. But what about a particular computer would cause such widespread issues in one and only one app?
How I reproduced it:
- I was using Preview and Pages in Split View. I was highlighting a PDF in Preview and taking notes in Pages.
- Then I closed my Macbook Air to put it to sleep until the following day.
- Today I opened my laptop, logged in, and returned to the Split View with the PDF and my notes. Everything looked fine.
- Then I went to mission control view to "unsplit" Split View (i.e., the two-arrow logo). Preview crashed (as it always does when it leaves Split View).
- When I reopened the PDF in Preview, the highlights had moved.
I have the exact same issue, and it's extremely frustrating. I have sent a bug report to Apple through the Beta program's Feedback Assistant, despite the fact that it occurs on my machine running an official release. If anyone figures out how to fix documents and annotations that have been destroyed, please speak up.
Hi gpalermo,
I'm reaaly bummed to hear you're having the same problem. I hope our solution is on the horizon!
Here's two things I've done to deal with this issue:
I thought I was the only one experiencing this kind of problem. My other problem is that when I reopen a certain file, there's a border added in the left and bottom part of the PDF. PLUS, all of the text were pushed/indented in the right because of this "border" problem. PLEASE, IF ANYONE KNOWS HOW TO FIX THIS, KINDLY TELL US.
Highlight problem:
"Border" problem:
I am no longer having this problem. Here is what I have done since I first noticed the problem.
This suggests that the issue was with my install (which is frustrating since I have reinstalled about 5-6 times this year for a variety of problems; Who knew that reinstalling might actually create problems?).
I hope you all have the same or better luck!
You aren't the only one. I have the exactly same issue.
Did anyone solve it?
It's really frustrating.
Preview: highlights moving after saving
