Comments from a Guest viewing the document in Chrome didn't save

[eleighb]

I shared a document with my client, and they have been providing comments as a Guest without logging in. However, a HUGE percentage of their comments have gone missing, and now they have to repeat over an hour of the work they did yesterday. Here is the timeline:

1.  I sent my client a link to the document: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:5b761974-313d-45a0-b45b-ae7b07740ca1
2.  On Friday, they started leaving comments as a guest, viewing the document in their Chrome browser on their Mac. Those comments stuck and show up as being left by "Guest 1."
3. I got the typical email notification from Adobe about the comments, and I was able to see them in the file when I viewed it in the Acrobat application on Friday.
4. My client left their browser tab open to the document when they left work for the weekend. 
5. On Monday, they picked up where they left off with the open browser tab and spent an hour and a half reviewing the document, adding comments, and replying to my comments. Periodically, they'd get a red error message saying "We were unable to post your comment, please try again." They would hit "Retry" in the comment box, and it would appear to work. They could see all their comments in the document. 
6. However, I never got any notifications from Adobe yesterday (Monday), and when I checked the document yesterday, I didn't see any new comments from them.
7. They kept the browser tab open when they left for the day Monday evening.
8. This morning (Tuesday), they came back to resume their feedback, but when they tried to reply to one of my comments, they got the red error message again. This time, instead of clicking "Retry," they decided to close the window and start fresh by accessing the document via the link I had sent.
9. When they clicked the link, they went straight to the page where they wanted to leave their comment. When they did, they were prompted this time to include their name. They told me that they had not encountered this step on Friday or Monday.
10. Then, upon leaving their comment, they scrolled earlier in the document and realized that every single comment they had left on Monday was missing. That meant over an hour of work had to be recreated.

This is incredibly frustrating, and makes all of us really skeptical about relying on Adobe. Please look into this issue.

[eleighb]

I'm also having an issue now where I get the email notifications that my client is adding comments, but the emails lack any information about the comments. See the attached screenshots showing 1) the email notification and 2) the actual comment in the Acrobat application.

[Amal.]

Hi there,

Hope you're doing well, and thanks for reaching out and sharing your experience.

When someone opens a PDF in Chrome and adds comments directly in the browser, those comments might not be saved. That’s because Chrome (and other browsers) use their own built-in PDF viewers, which don’t always support features like saving comments properly.

To make sure your comments are saved:

1. Download the PDF  to your device.
2. Open it using Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader.
3. Add your comments and save the file.

If the PDF was shared through Adobe Document Cloud or sent for review, it’s best to use the 'Open in Acrobat' option (when available). This ensures everything works smoothly and all your comments get saved and synced correctly.

For more info, you can also check this help page: https://adobe.ly/4j2BMBH

Hope this information will help.

[eleighb]

Hi Amal,

It sounds like I didn't clearly explain the issue. My client is using Chrome to view this Adobe Document Cloud link: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:5b761974-313d-45a0-b45b-ae7b07740ca1

The comments they are leaving in that ADOBE DOCUMENT CLOUD file are not saving. 

This is a major issue because the whole purpose of sharing files via the Adobe Document Cloud is to provide people the opportunity to comment on the document. I have been an Adobe user for 20+ years, and have shared files with this particular client via the Adobe Document Cloud for 3+ years and have never had issues like this.

[Amal.]

Hi there,

Thank you for providing more details about the issue. Could you please confirm if this is happening with a specific PDF file or with multiple PDFs?

I attempted to reproduce the issue on my end by commenting as a guest on a shared PDF, and all guest comments appeared correctly for me.

You may ask the user to try with a different browser or clear cache memory of the chrome browser and resetting it.