Delete highlights and annotations from group members

mosera · 2026-06-15T19:58:35+00:00

I use Zotero groups to collaborate with my students. Some students have highlighted and annotated the pdfs. I don't want these to be seen by other students. Is there a way to delete them or have them hidden to other members. When I go into the pdf (I'm admin), it shows those highlights/annotations are locked and I can't do anything to them.

adamsmith · 2026-06-15T20:02:34+00:00

As long as you allow editing items in the group, participants can annotate and you can't hide those annotations.

mosera · 2026-06-15T20:11:22+00:00

That is good to know they can’t be hidden. Is there a way for me to delete them? Even the student tried to delete their own highlighting and it wouldn’t let them.

adamsmith · 2026-06-15T21:05:11+00:00

When you click on "Show file" and then open the file in an external PDF reader (like Acrobat) -- do the annotations show? If folks annotated outside Zotero, that changes things in various ways.

mosera · 2026-06-15T21:10:18+00:00

Nope. No annotations or highlights in file (pdf). Checked two readers just in case. Only shown in Zotero.

adamsmith · 2026-06-15T21:17:38+00:00

Then you can't delete them, but they should definitely be able to delete their own annotations.

warguelles · 2026-06-15T22:56:20+00:00

As far as I know, you can change the group Library settings to avoid any member to add, edit or remove items from the group (Library Editing), but I suppose they can read them, isn't it?

Maybe it is a solution.

mosera · 2026-06-16T13:13:55+00:00

The issue I've run into is that one of the students who made the highlight opened the pdf in Zotero, but it shows locked to her as well. So she couldn't remove the highlight either even though it says her name as the owner of it. Another issue is one student isn't here anymore, so there is no way to get them to remove the comment.

The bummer is I want them to be able to add articles to our shared research work, but I don't want them to be able to annotate items. I don't think that is an option though.

Seems like only fix is to delete the entry, then remake it fresh using the pdf I already have.

adamsmith · 2026-06-16T13:21:47+00:00

You can delete and re-add the attachment, no need to remove the entire entry, but I agree, that's probably the only way to do this.
And at least for the moment, you're correct that you can't allow adding items but not allow annotating them.

dstillman · 2026-06-16T13:25:59+00:00

So she couldn't remove the highlight either even though it says her name as the owner of it.

@mosera: Can you email support@zotero.org with 1) a link to this thread, 2) the zotero.org URL when clicking on the parent item in the web library, and 3) a screenshot of the locked annotation in question?