My Comments have Disappeared

[Chava5C70]

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

[jane-e]

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

[Chava5C70]

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.

[try67]

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

[Juan306334970ubx]

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.

[lilab41341537]

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

[Peter_CEC]

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. · Accepted solution]

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

[Peter_CEC]

Thank you, Amal. Autosave was not enabled; now it is for 5-minute intervals.

Peter

[Amal.]

Hi there

Spread the word and help others by marking the correct answer so future users can benefit from your experience.

~Amal

[groucho7]

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.