Including formating from PDF comments

[rasmussvanejensen]

Is there a way to keep the formating of a PDF comment when importing the comments to InDesign?

Clients and proofreaders will often have italic or bold text as part of their comments, but the formating is lost after importing into InDesign.

[JonathanArias · Accepted solution]

you may have a feature request here:

https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

How would indesign know which italic you want to apply? what if you have multiples?  I think you would still need some human interaction to map that when they say italic to apply this or that one. and would you need to do that every time you load comments? kind of would add more clicks every time versus now you just apply the style in one click?

[rasmussvanejensen]

Perfect – I will make one 🙂

Off the top of my head: InDesign should just apply what ever it recives from the PDF. The formating options for the comments are pretty limited – Bold, Italic, Underline, ...

If I accept a comment that has italic characters, the formatted text would be [italic].

If I accept a comment that has bold characters, the formatted text would be [bold].

If I accept a comment that has bold italic characters, the formatted text would be [bold italic].

If I am using a font that does not have an Italic weight (Maybe it uses Regualre Italic), the text would just recive the standart missing font warning (The pink highlight).

This would let the user get the styling of the comment as it was given, without having to switch back and forth between InDesign and Acrobat.

What do you think?

[JonathanArias]

but what about condense, oblique, light, heavy, extended and so on? those have their one italics, bolds, and bold italics. just becase i choose italic how will indesing know which to apply if i have condense italic, oblique italic and regulat italic, and so on? i would have to tell it every time.  sounds like more clicking, that adds time.

I think its more complicated that it sounds, and it adds more clicking. versus now if it says italic, you apply the style, one click. 

good luck!

[rasmussvanejensen]

You do not have the option to make a comment in Acrobat using a weight like Bold Condensed Italic – The problem would not arrise.

What you are describing is not working on my machine. Does it work on yours?

I have attached a couple of screens shots showing InDesign clearing the styling.

[JonathanArias]

right. what you are talkign about/askign for does not exist, which is why is a feature request. i was just commenting on how that would even work with multiple weights. It sounds like a great idea and you should submit it for people to vote on it. 

As of today. you read the comment, and go to your character styles, and apply the style. 

you do not have the option in acrobat because acrobat does not read styles, the .pdf you make does not, in the file data, retain styles names. what you are asking for would mean acrobat would have to remember all of the styles. plus it would need to load the styles names as options for the person to tag it in the comments.  

[rasmussvanejensen]

Acrobat must retain information about the formating used in the comment.

I get PDF's from every week where comments contain italic or bold text. In the file, italic-comment_1.png, attached to my previous post, you see the text in the comment is italic.

I am sure it's not a trivial feature to implement, but I setting the correct italic, is not super important. The important thing is to transfer some indication that the text should be italic.

[StudioGDigital]

I know I'm very late to the party here, but what I think the OP is requesting is the appearance of the comments in the comments list. The bolding and italicization doesn't have to tranfer to the document when you click accept, but at least when you are reviewing the comments list and some inserted or replaced text contains bolding and italics (which is a thing you can do in the PDF comments) you can see what words need formatting.

For example, your client wants to insert a new sentence in the document, and two of the words in the new text are italicized. You can see this in the comments list in Acrobat but it's all the same generic roman font in InDesign. It would be great to be able to see this formatting in InDesign's comments list so that when you click Accept and the new text is inserted, you can then go in and manually apply the styling to the words using Character Styles or whatever. The point is, you don't have to hunt down the corresponding comment in Acrobat to see whether or not there's formatting applied. That almost defeats the purpose of the Import Comments feature.

[Laubender]

Hi rasmussvanejensen,

I wonder if it's possible to retain bold, italic, bold italic and underline if we copy/paste the text from the PDF comment in Acrobat to InDesign and not using Acrobat's default font Segoe UI. In short: Yes, it is possible!

The long story:

You can insert formatted text in Acrobat's Comment fields if you copy formatted text from e.g. Word to the comment field. So it is possible to copy/paste the comment formatted to the clipboard.

A next step in InDesign will require the script RichPaste.jsx by Marc Autret to insert the styles to any text in InDesign without using Segoe UI. The copied styles will be retained for any base font that is applied to the text and where this base font supports the styles.

Possible configuration of RichPaste below. The script's UI follows the language of my German UI with InDesign.

As far as I can recall it comes with German, French and English UI. English UI is used for any other localized versions of InDesign.

RichPaste | Copy and Paste with Minimal Formatting [UPDATE]
Marc Autret, April 06, 2016

https://www.indiscripts.com/post/2015/10/richpaste-copy-and-paste-with-minimal-formatting

Just tested RichPaste.jsx successfully on a formatted PDF comment that I copied from Acrobat Pro to the clipboard and pasted it with the help of the script to InDesign text.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[rasmussvanejensen]

Hi Uwe.

Thank you for your suggestion.

Would I be using InDesign's Import PDF Comments feature, or would I switch back and forth between InDesign and the PDF in Acrobat?

It would be great if I could import the comments with the *simple* formating – That is extly the behaviour I would need.

Best regards

[Laubender]

You'd use the clipboard.

So you switch between Acrobat and InDesign.

Hm. The comments feature in Acrobat also has an Export to Word… feature.

But that is only working with tagged PDFs.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[rasmussvanejensen]

I made a feature request when I made the post:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/43010946-im...

I didn't see that there already was another one:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/39571735-im...

Would love to see this fixed.

Thanks for you great help 🙂

[tobias.wantzen]

For a workaround please see my free Acrobat script and blog post here:
https://wantzen.com/blog/acrobat-script-formatierung-in-kommentaren-auszeichnen/

Sorry for publishing in German. But when you download the script and open it with a text editor, you can read installation and usage instructions in German and English.

The script can be run in Acrobat before importing into InDesign. It will add tags to all (important) formattings inside all comments.

Please feedback me bugs or improvement ideas!

Regards, Tobias

[Philippe22363446amxu]

Hello Tobias, we work with the Adobe Acrobat DC from Adobe creative suite and when trying to use the script we see this error in the debugger: 

NotAllowedError: Security settings prevent access to this property or method.
App.trustedFunction:99:Document-Level:Taggged text

Nor do we have a Javascript folder in the Program Files. 

I added one myself and added the script there but no use 😞

U know a solution for this?

Phil

[tobias.wantzen]

Hello Phil,

the script will not run from within the JavaScript console. You have to install it. For an English how-to on installing scripts to Acrobat, please have a look at Kelley's site:

http://documentgeek.blogspot.com/2019/06/how-to-install-script-to-acrobats-menu.html

Which operating system do you use? Windows? MacOS?

I hope, this helps!

Tobias

[Philippe22363446amxu]

I work on Windows.

Made a folder here and inserted the script there: C:\Users\Pwattyn\AppData\Local\Adobe\Acrobat\DC\JavaScripts

Since it does not work made also one here:

C:\Users\Pwattyn\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\DC\JavaScripts

But no succes even when following the guide u recommended.

[tobias.wantzen]

Hej Phil,

I’m on a Mac and have no access to a Windows with Acrobat installed. But as far as I read Kelly’s blog post, I mentioned, correctly, you should try to install the scripts in the application folder:

Windows (32 bit):
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat <VERSION NUMBER>\Acrobat\JavaScripts

Windows (64 bit):
 C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat <VERSION NUMBER>\Acrobat\JavaScripts

Please give this a try.

Kind regards,

Tobias

[Laubender]

Commented and voted.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[StudioGDigital]

I know this is an old thread but it’s still not fixed. I think if we forget about scripts and workarounds, and dial back to the original request of the OP, it’s really a matter of how the comments are displayed within the comments list. It doesn’t have to magically choose the right font and style when the change is accepted, but in the comments LIST it should at least display with the same formatting as it appears in Acrobat comments.

I mean, of course InDesign doesn’t know what character style it should choose when a word is in italic, but I should be able to see that it’s italic in my InDesign comments list so that I can apply the appropriate character style manually after accepting the change. As it stands now I have to have Acrobat open at the same time as InDesign and carefully match up the comments to check what kind of formatting the editor wants. Sometimes the editor only wants formatting changed, and he’ll do a Replace Text with the exact same words, but italicized in Acrobat. There’s no way for me to see that in InDesign; it looks like he just wants the words replaced with… the same words.

Oh, and guess what. When you try to match Acrobat comments with InDesign, you’ll find the comments are in a completely different order in InDesign compared to Acrobat. So frustrating!

[Laubender]

Hi @StudioGDigital ,

I feel your pain.

"It doesn’t have to magically choose the right font and style when the change is accepted, but in the comments LIST it should at least display with the same formatting as it appears in Acrobat comments."

Yes, that would be a minmum requirement for such a feature.

The commenting party may not be aware, that formatting of PDF comments is not displayed in InDesign.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

[tobias.wantzen]

Hej @StudioGDigital ,

you are completely right and I second your writing strongly.

For the meantime, I’m really happy with my Acrobat script, which saves you the manual comparison you describe completely. Give it a try:

https://wantzen.com/blog/acrobat-script-formatierung-in-kommentaren-auszeichnen/

Regards,

Tobias

[JimmyRussell5]

Yes, it would be good to see what was intended by the proofreader or editor right there in the comments section.

[edwardp70705052]

Thanks for describing the problem and possible solution so concisely, as the initial replies to the original poster unnecessarily overcomplicated the issue!

I just hope Adobe is listening....

[Filip Grønning5E06]

Second this! Needs to be fixed asap.