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New Participant
August 29, 2021
Answered

My Comments have Disappeared

  • August 29, 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 18249 views

I worked for 6 hours commenting on a PDF and the 200 or so comments have disappeared!
The comment pane shows only one random comment, so they couldn't have all been deleted accidentally. 
Please tell me there is a way to recover this!
I have a deadline.

Thank you

Correct answer Amal.

Hi there

 

Hope you are doing well.

 

Your only hope is that Acrobat creates a backup copy, which it will do if the option under Preferences (Ctrl,Cmd+K). - Documents - Automatically save document changes... is enabled.

 

The Autosave feature guards against losing your work in case of a power failure by incrementally, and at regular intervals, saving file changes to a specified location. The original file is not modified. Instead, Acrobat creates an autosave file of changes, which includes all the changes you made to the open file since the last automatic save. The amount of new information that the autosave file contains depends on how frequently Acrobat saves the autosave file. If you set the autosave interval to 15 minutes, you could lose the last 14 minutes of your work if a problem occurs. Frequent automatic saving prevents loss of data, and is especially useful if you make extensive changes to a document, such as by adding comments.

 

For more information, please check the help page https://adobe.ly/4bJwEi3

 

~Amal

4 replies

Participating Frequently
August 24, 2024

Your comments may have disappeared because you had accidentally turned off their display, perhaps by searching for a text within your comments. You can try to restore their display by turing offf the search box and any filters you may have used. Read the Adobe Acrobat Reader documentation about displaying comments.

New Participant
May 29, 2024

I just suffered the same loss in Acrobat Pro.  I spent the whole day adding comments to a PDF file, then Acrobat froze, with "(Not Responding)" appearing in the top bar, and then Acrobat closed abruptly.  I reopened the PDF in Acrobat, and my whole day's comments disappeared.  Ctrl+8 did no good.  

Amal.
Community Manager
Amal.Community ManagerCorrect answer
Community Manager
May 30, 2024

Hi there

 

Hope you are doing well.

 

Your only hope is that Acrobat creates a backup copy, which it will do if the option under Preferences (Ctrl,Cmd+K). - Documents - Automatically save document changes... is enabled.

 

The Autosave feature guards against losing your work in case of a power failure by incrementally, and at regular intervals, saving file changes to a specified location. The original file is not modified. Instead, Acrobat creates an autosave file of changes, which includes all the changes you made to the open file since the last automatic save. The amount of new information that the autosave file contains depends on how frequently Acrobat saves the autosave file. If you set the autosave interval to 15 minutes, you could lose the last 14 minutes of your work if a problem occurs. Frequent automatic saving prevents loss of data, and is especially useful if you make extensive changes to a document, such as by adding comments.

 

For more information, please check the help page https://adobe.ly/4bJwEi3

 

~Amal

New Participant
May 30, 2024
Thank you, Amal. Autosave was not enabled; now it is for 5-minute intervals.

Peter
try67
Braniac
August 29, 2021

How did this happen, exactly? Did the application crash? Did you save the file before it did?

New Participant
June 21, 2023

Hello, I came to this post years later, I suffered something similar, and I recovered all my comments.

1)Go to the comment panel's filter icon and click "Hide all comments". Save the file with an alternate name.

2)Go to the same comments panel and click on "Show all comments". All comments should be seen.

My file was on a local disk (it's dangerous to work on a network disk for a lot of hours without saving your file).

I knew good old Acrobat could not fail this badly.

New Participant
March 14, 2024

Mine doesn't even let me click the filter without any comments to filter.

jane-e
Braniac
August 29, 2021

Hi @Chava5C70 

 

One thing to try is to check to see if there are any filters that have been applied and clear them.

 

From the Filter comments menu in the Comments list, do any of the following:

  • To clear all filters, click Clear All. Alternatively, use Ctrl+8 (Windows) or Command+8 (Mac OS).

  • Use the toggle switch to show or hide all comments. Alternatively, use Ctrl+Shift+8 (Windows) or Command+Shift+8 (Mac OS).

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/comments.html

 

~ Jane

 

Chava5C70Author
New Participant
August 29, 2021

I trid, to no avail...
Why is there no automatic recovery like in a Word document?
I can't believe this. hours of work wasted.