Issue: Editing another user's comment or annotation in a PDF changes the comment username to the editor instead of maintaining the original user's name in Desktop versions of Acrobat Pro. This is not tied to the preference "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name."
Impact: This is change in behavior and disrupts with managed multiple reviewer workflows. Often a person project managing routing wants to clean up/clarify comments before routing to different audiences. This workflow is frequently used in anonymous workflows or workflows where not all information is appropriate or clear for the audience downstream. Often our files have 500-1000 comments for proofreading. Being able to clean up comments instead of replying reduces amount of comments in a file, streamlines the conversations, protects sensitvie information, and means files are less likely to crash or need to be split into multiple PDFs.
For the examples below, users have different names set for login and non-login names for comment properties:
- "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name" disabled in Preferences: Reviewer
- "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name" enabled in Preferences: Log-in
Behavior For ALL versions Until PC and Mac version 24.002.20854 release
- With "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name" disabled in Preferences:
- If Log-in 1 had made previous mark up/comments with log-in name, then disabled this and changed their commenting name to Reviewer 1:
- When they edit and update their own markup/comments, the comments would stay attributed to Log-in 1
- New markup/comments would be attributed to Reviewer 1
- With "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name" enabled in Preferences:
- If Reviewer 1 had made previous comments, then disabled this:
- When they edit and update their own markup/comments, the comments would stay attributed to Reviewer 1
- New markup/comments would be attributed to Log-in 1
- With With "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name" disabled OR enabled in Preferences:
- If Log-in 1/Reviewer 1 edited anyone else's markup/comments, comment maintains the original name:
- E.g., Log-in 1/Reviewer 1 makes a comment in a file. Reviewer 2 edits and updates the comment. It does not matter if either reviewer has this preference enabled or enabled, the comment will always remain attributed to Log-in 1/Reviewer 1. It will not switch to Reviewer 2 when edited. This is the expected behavior and what has been the behavior up until this release. If users do not want their comments edited, they can lock them.
Behavior Change with PC and Mac version 24.002.20854 release and after
- With "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name" disabled in Preferences:
- If Log-in 1 had made previous mark up/comments with log-in name, then disabled this and changed their commenting name to Reviewer 1:
- Previous comments when edited and updated change to Reviewer 1
- New markup/comments are attributed to Reviewer 1
- With "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name" enabled in Preferences:
- If Reviewer 1 had made previous comments, then disabled this:
- When they edit and update their own markup/comments, the comments change to Reviewer 1
- New markup/comments are attributed to Log-in
- With With "Always Use Log-in Name For Author Name" disabled OR enabled in Preferences:
Undesirable Workraounds:
- Change reviewer name back to original after updating a comment: As project managers go through cleaning up comments, they would have to:
- Update a comment and have the name change.
- Edit the comment Properties > General > Author and paste in the original Reviewer name.
- Reason this isn't ideal: Users work page-by-page when reviewing files with multiple commenters, not commenter-by-commenter. They could not make the original Reviewer name default and work their way through a document. They would have to do it comment by comment. This is extremely tedious in 800 page documents with 1000+ comments but 6+ reviewers.
- Reply instead of edit a comment: As mentioned above:
- Some information is sensitive, inappropriate, or would cause confusion to reviewers downstream.
- It bloats the amount of comments in a file and leads to crashing/slowness.
Please change this behavior back to what has existed forever.
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