Alert Hypertext Marker Gives Inconsistent PDF Results

[dauphinb]

Reading another discussion about using FM's Alert hypertext marker to generate sticky-note comments in PDF output, I was thinking this would be a good addition to my group's toolset, to flow our editorial comments and questions back to authors and other stakeholders. When I tested it, though, I got unexpectedly inconsistent results.

For reference, we use unstructured FM2019 and Acrobat 2017 Pro (within TCS2019) to publish books (i.e., no dynamic/online formats required). I tried inserting an Alert marker in text in a few different files and created PDFs in a few different ways (i.e., print, save as, publish), and I got varying results:

• In one file, the marker turned into not one, but three PDF sticky notes, identical to each other but scattered around the marker location. I tried deleting and reinserting the marker, and tried outputting to PDF in all three ways, but got the same result each time.
• In another file, I got just one sticky when I used save as and publish to generate a PDF, but no sticky at all when I printed to PDF. The sticky I did get wasn't sensibly close to the actual marker location.
• Only in one file did I consistently get a single sticky in the PDF that was usefully near the FM marker location.

All three of the files I used were created from our standard book-chapter template; I can't think of any differences between the files that could account for the differing results. Any idea what I'm missing here?

[Barb Binder]

Hello again, Dauphin:

I'm going to copy/paste your questions for context.   My answers are in italics:

• In one file, the marker turned into not one, but three PDF sticky notes, identical to each other but scattered around the marker location. I tried deleting and reinserting the marker, and tried outputting to PDF in all three ways, but got the same result each time.

In that other discussion, I found the the alert marker moved itself to a new location. I moved it back for my screen shot because the OP was on 2017, and then promptly forgot about it. I don't recall seeing that in any other version. Something is up with alert markers in 2019.

• In another file, I got just one sticky when I used save as and publish to generate a PDF, but no sticky at all when I printed to PDF. The sticky I did get wasn't sensibly close to the actual marker location.

This is expected behavior if you didn't click Generate Acrobat Data.

• Only in one file did I consistently get a single sticky in the PDF that was usefully near the FM marker location.

I would recommend logging this as a bug and then coming back to this thread and post the link. I'll follow it and add my vote.

~Barb

[dauphinb]

In addition to fixing my paste-ing problem, accessing the forums through Chrome finally allowed me to report this bug; I hadn't been able to access the tracker from IE11!

[Barb Binder]

Great news on both fronts!

~Barb