Downloading shared PDF files with comments

[bertg469759]

Is there a way to download a shared PDF with the comments that were added by those that the file was shared with? I was asked for archiving purposes.

[ls_rbls]

Yes it is possible.

What exactly is the workflow that you are trying to accomplish?

[bertg469759]

One of the departments that contribute copy for the PDF wants to keep track of the final review commentary, so they want to store the PDFs for reference. Referring to the files on the cloud is not efficient for how they work.

[ls_rbls]

Hi,

When you use the comments tool and open the tracker you want to save those results to an actual PDF so that you can open it at a later time and be able to identify the comments made by the reviewer, correct?

Here is  a good idea that you can try. You can use a javascript action using the Action Wizard, and/or combine this javascript action with other built-in tools. 

With Acrobat opened, go to Tools and select the Action Wizard Tool. 

Create a New Action as shown in the slide below:

And copy and paste the following script in the Javascript Editor window as shown above:

this.syncAnnotScan();
var annots = this.getAnnots({
nSortBy: ANSB_Author,
bReverse: true});


// open a new report
var rep = new Report();
rep.writeText("Summary of Comments: By Author");
rep.color = color.black;
rep.writeText(" ");
rep.writeText("Number of Comments: " + annots.length);
rep.writeText(" ");
var msg = "\200 page %s: \"%s\"";
var theAuthor = annots[0].author;
rep.writeText(theAuthor);
rep.indent(20);
for (var i=0; i < annots.length; i++) {
if (theAuthor != annots[i].author) {
theAuthor = annots[i].author;
rep.writeText(" ");
rep.outdent(20);
rep.writeText(theAuthor);
rep.indent(20);
}
rep.writeText(util.printf(msg, 1 + annots[i].page, annots[i].contents));
}
// now open the report
var docRep = rep.open("REVIEWERS COMMENTS REPORT.pdf");
docRep.info.Title = "REVIEWERS COMMENTS";
docRep.info.Subject = "Summary of comments in this Document Filtered by Author";

The script abobe decalres a variable with the function, "new Report()", and in the example it will generate a report consisting of a summary of comments filtered by Author, the number of total comments per Author(s), the messages that the commenter(s) posted and the page number where the annotationns or comments were added.

See results below:

 

You can edit this script to suite your needs using the Adobe Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Reference Guide, example of the code is found in Pages 310-311, "Row Generic Object".

In addition, you can leave this report as is, so the user can pull it up from My Documents (in winndows) without the need of opening the actual PDF and reviewing comments in the tracker everytime, 

OR,

If you prefer you can also merge this report to the original file,by using the Combine Tool as an action added right after the javascript action. After the jscript action executes  it will open the combine tool wizard.

 See below:

This will save the newly merged document into a PDF binder. Note that after you click on "Add Files" it will bring another dialogue box where you can also customize the new binder filename with an appended prefix, for example; making it easier to find this reports and not confusing it for the original source PDFs.