PDF reader: on first page, yellow rectangle and no ability to annotate

macrospect
I have recently encountered the issue that, on most PDFs, I cannot make highlights or other annotations on the first page in the reader, because the first page is selected in one huge yellow rectangle and, when I click anywhere within the rectangle, nothing happens except that the viewer jumps to split view. If I'm already in split view because I've clicked once, nothing happens on a second click. On page 2 of every PDF, the yellow rectangle disappears. Is anyone else familiar with this? Do you have a fix?
  • dstillman
    Disable all third-party plugins.
  • macrospect
    Do you mean disable each one to figure out which one is causing the problem? Or that this happens whenever you have any plugins at all enabled? (I depend heavily on several of my plugins.)
  • adamsmith
    The former, just for testing
  • macrospect
    Thank you. I disabled all plug-ins, and the problem persists.

    I also discovered a connection among the PDFs for which this is happening: they all seem to be book chapters. Not standalone articles. I also realized that some of my book chapters have a more limited version of the problem: the yellow rectangle appears only at the very top of the first page, on the title of the chapter or where a header for the book is presented, and therefore doesn't interfere with annotating of the text on that page.
  • adamsmith
    Are you able to link to a couple of the chapters for which this happens (even if they're behind a registration wall -- decent chance one of us has access).
  • macrospect
    I seem not to be able to reproduce the problem. I got links for some of the chapters with the full-page issue, but when I redownloaded from those links, the chapters are clear. It may be that these were originally part of a larger full-book PDF, and I split the PDF off into separate chapters. Should I not be doing that for Zotero?

    The only issue I could reproduce upon redownloading from a link was for this chapter, which only has the header (not full page) yellow rectangle:

    https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28086/chapter/212128668

    But that's just for illustration of the larger phenomenon; I can live with the header-only obstruction.

  • dstillman
    Can you email the PDF in question to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
  • macrospect
    Will do, thank you!
  • dstillman
    Nothing to do with Zotero — that's just a problem with the PDF. You can see this in any PDF reader. You'll get a hand-pointer cursor while over the first page, and a regular text-selection cursor elsewhere. Clicking it refocuses the first page, so it seems to be an internal link to the first page. If you're seeing this in a file downloaded directly from a publisher, you should notify them, but if it's just in files you've processed, it's some problem with however you're processing them.

    For what it's worth, in the Zotero 7 beta you can still create annotations within that zone, despite the yellow highlight.

    (Also, to clarify, the automatic split view you mentioned originally would've been from some plugin that automatically opens the split view when you click an internal link. That's not something Zotero does currently.)
  • macrospect
    Thank you very much for this information! Maybe I'll end up switching to the beta sooner than expected.
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