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Including formating from PDF comments

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
March 26, 2021
6 replies
5867 views

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.

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Correct answer JonathanArias

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?

F

Filip Grønning5E06

New Participant

Second this! Needs to be fixed asap.

S

StudioGDigital

Participating Frequently

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!

L

Laubender

Community Expert

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 )

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Commented and voted.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

L

Laubender

Community Expert

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 )

R

rasmussvanejensenAuthor

Known Participant

I made a feature request when I made the post:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/43010946-import-formatting-from-pdf-comments

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

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/39571735-import-pdf-comments-to-include-text-style

Would love to see this fixed.

Thanks for you great help 🙂

T

tobias.wantzen

Inspiring

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

L

Laubender

Community Expert

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 )

R

rasmussvanejensenAuthor

Known Participant

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

JonathanAriasCorrect answer

Brainiac

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?

R

rasmussvanejensenAuthor

Known Participant

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

Brainiac

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!

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