PDF comments reappear after being deleted

[madeleineHPP1]

A colleague recently alerted me to an issue she'd had with two separate PDFs, which were created by different people. A few people had added comments and my colleague was trying to delete some of the comments, but whenever she deleted a comment it would momentarily disappear and then pop right back up. Because it was happening on two different PDFs, she assumed it was an issue with her Acrobat settings so she tried it on another computer, but had the same problem. I then also tried to delete comments from one of the PDFs and the same thing happened to me. However, there are other PDFs from which I can delete the comments fine, so I think it must be something to do with the specific files.

We spoke to one of the creators of these PDFs and she said that she had done nothing different in terms of set-up from previous PDFs, on which we haven't had this problem.

Any ideas as to what's going on and how we can fix it? We're both using the up-to-date version of Acrobat DC.

[defaultkm92szodjxww]

I am having the same problem. I delete comments and about 10 seconds later they reappear. I can edit the comment to remove the text, but I cannot delete the comment itself. Three people have added comments to this PDF, although I did not use the sharing function. Has anyone experienced this and found a solution?

[timw717]

Any updates to this problem?

[sonjah48546884]

any updates on this? I am having the same issue

[madeleineHPP1]

I'm afraid we never got to the bottom of it, but it hasn't happened since so we assumed it must have just been a temporary glitch. 

[Ricardo12]

Does not appear to be a temporary glitch as this comment re appears after deleting it. 

[Christopher28777186607f]

I just recently ran into this myself, a training course workbook, that's protected, but allowed to add comments for student notes.  I had one comment that would not remove, about 5 seconds after delete it would reappear.  This happened to be an empty space.  I added a note to it, removed, deleted, checked, rejected, each delete it would reappear within no more than 10 seconds.  What got rid of it was to delete the comment, then immediately hit CTRL-S to save the document.  It took 3 tries, the 3rd timing was late returning the comment, which it did not.  Close and open the document showed no comments.  Not a fix to true delete, but works to permanently remove the comment.

[leight44908543]

This is a recurring problem for our studio. It's been going on for a few years now. The problem only seems to occur with comments from specific users, making me think that it is something to do with those users' account set-ups. It would be great if the community could get to the bottom of this issue.

[Amal.]

Hi there,

Hope you are doing well and thanks for reaching out.

What is the workflow/steps you are doing to remove the comments? A small video recording of the same would be very helpful.

Also, make sure you have the recent version 24.01.20615 installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Let us know how it goes.

~Amal

[ginger_9982]

I have 80 pdf maps I update daily and am running into this same issue where I delete a text box and it goes away and then pops back up seconds later. It's crazy. I used to be able to click on the text box, click delete. Now it looks like it deletes it, but the moment I hit save and go back into it, it is not deleting it.

Very frustrating having to keep re-opening the files to make sure all the changes I made "took"

[hatshatahsththstst]

yup, still happening here too.

i click on a bubble and press the backspace key - this happens

i click on a comment (hilight or bubble) and hit the trash can icon, also happens.

but it only kicks in on certain documents, and not the entire document. it'll start at page 5 or something and keep going.

[ausnomad]

This problematic behaviour seems to still be an issue. 

[joseph_1189]

In case anyone is still having this problem - this was driving me insane but I think I have the solution; hopefully this works for others...

Upon right-clicking the relevant comment, instead of left-clicking "Delete", hit "L" on your keyboard and the comment should disappear for good. 

[brittany_3238]

Still happening in 2025. I found a workaround, albeit not 100% reliable. I marked my comments as "completed" and then deleted them and they didn't come back.