Participant

Question

Online shared PDF files lose all comments when unshared

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 21, 2024
5 replies
2233 views

Hi everyone,

We're using Acrobat (CC version) with a major global client and have successfully shared PDFs for review and comment.

Our process is:

create PDF
create a link to share (so the PDF is uploaded to Document Cloud)
allow reviewers to comment
unshare the PDF and save back to the desktop

This process has been working seamlessly for several years but today it has hit a major bug

The latest PDF was unshared and saved to the desktop. As soon as it was unshared, all the comments in it were lost. They no longer appear in either the saved desktop version or the Document Cloud version.

We have also opened previously shared/unshared PDFs that are on Document Cloud and they exhibit the same behaviour – all comments are no longer in the PDF.

In the notifications panel, we can click and see the notifications for the comments that have been added. Clicking on the notification opens the relevant PDF but, as noted, no comments are visible in the PDF.

This is a serious issue for us with our client so I'm hoping someone may be able to shed light on it.

As noted, this behaviour only started today so it hasn't lost us too much credit with the client yet. Thanks for any help or advice that you can provide.

N

nick_6031

Participant

This just happened to me with a pdf saved in my online account at https://acrobat.adobe.com.

I added my comments to a private document, and when I shared it, all comments were removed!

N

nick_6031

Participant

Quick follow up, others in this thread have complained about the opposite happening. First sharing, then adding comments, then making private again and losing comments. For this situation, there is an error warning that appears: "Unshare error - If you continue to unshare this file, the comments will be lost. You can unshare anyway, or try again later.". I would like to point out this type of error does NOT appear if the file is private first with comments, then shared, as I pointed out in my initial reply. My workaround was to share first, then add all comments. Then if needed, download a version of the file with comments, and upload it as a new, private file. It should show any comments downloaded with the doc.

N

nick_6031

Participant

I learned this after my problem and with much trial and error. That said, I never got prompts, ever, so maybe that's new? But all that said, switching from private to public and vice versa shouldn't delete comments. That sounds like a huge bug and should be addressed. Still hoping it will be.

It very well could be a new warning for the unsharing direction! Completely agree that this functionality appears like a bug, since there continues to be no warning in the sharing direction. It should be an option prompt that can be selected (deselected by default) when sharing/unsharing. "Would you like to remove all annotations before sharing/unsharing Yes/No". Majority of the time the answer is NOOOOO! That's the whole point of sharing the document, my fu%^ing comments!

D

defaultbscp5ci9ir1b

Participant

Also happening for us. We use Cloud review for a customer and need to unshare and then download to place the file on a customer-owned server for ISO compliance. And now the comments have all vanished. This is terrible service.

R

RL_828

Participant

I can confirm that this issue still persists.

It's very infuriating. I've lost important work from a shared document I then made private. Why is this even a thing?

L

Lillian36107920an5c

Participant

The same thing just occured with our team. So frustrating. Is this new? I remember using this ClouadShare feature in 2020 and comments were not disappearing. I highly encourage Adobe to add a warning dialogue box when you tap "unshare" that says "You are about to unshare a document. Comments will no longer be available to review in the cloud or downloaded version of the PDF. Download your document before unsharing". The reason we unshare before downoading is to review the doc without new comments coming in. It's unbelievable that these UX issues exist.

Amal.

Legend

Hi @jimbohc

Hope you are doing well and sorry to hear that

Is this an issue with a particular PDF file or with all the PDFs? Please try with a different PDF file and check.

What is the version of the Acrobat DC you are using? To check the version go to Help > About Acrobat and make sure you have the recent version 23.08.20470 installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Also try to repair the installation from the help menu (Win Only) and see if that works.

Please try to reset the Acrobat preferences as described here https://adobe.ly/3ObzTVD and see if that works.

~Amal

J

jimbohcAuthor

Participant

Thanks for coming back so promptly on this.

This is an issue with all PDFs file that have been previously shared via Document Cloud and are now unshared

We're using Acrobat Pro installed via Creative Cloud Desktop

We have uninstalled and reinstalled the app using CC Desktop and the issue is still occurring. We're running macOS 14.2.1 so the Win Only option isn't relevant.

Following reinstallation we have also reset preferences

The issue remains after all of these steps so any further advice is appreciated. To our untechnical eyes, it seems as though Document Cloud has "forgotten" there are comments in the PDF which perhaps suggests a corruption in its database or similar

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