Import Annotations doesn't work for Area selected in Apple Preview / Highlights

nikhilraina
Hi,

I use Apple preview as my default pdf editor. However, when I open the annotated pdf in the Zotero editor it doesn't capture the area selections. I tried to do the same in Highlights and Adobe as well but face the same issue. Can you pls check if its a bug or the functionality isn't supported.

Thanks again for your efforts, Zotero 6 is a truly game-changing.

@dstillman
  • dstillman
    (Please don't tag specific people for general questions. Multiple people can answer most questions.)

    Zotero currently only imports rectangle annotations with a Zotero-specific flag from a previous export. We could consider importing all such annotations as image annotations, but it's a little risky — image extraction is a Zotero-specific feature, and there's no guarantee that people are using rectangle annotations externally in a way where it's appropriate to convert them all into images.
  • nikhilraina
    | Please don't tag specific people for general questions. Multiple people can answer most questions.

    Sorry, will keep that in mind.
    We are planning to move a significant part of our business workflow to Zotero, want to be clear about the limitations before moving.

    The annotations I'm referring to are the rectangular ones (called shapes in Apple Preview and image selection in Highlights). The rectangular selection in Apple preview only allows copying, not annotating.

    Can you pls suggest a work around ? We can work with a set of rules in other apps as long as it supports import in Zotero.

    Thanks for your help.
  • dstillman
    I'm not sure what you want us to say. "Image annotations" are a feature of Zotero's built-in PDF reader and note editor — we're not aware of any similar concept in other tools. If you want to use those, the thing to do would be to use Zotero's PDF reader.

    If you export a PDF from Zotero, Zotero will export image annotations as regular shape annotations in the file, and it will add a hidden flag that identifies those as Zotero image annotations so that they can be reimported into Zotero later. But it won't currently treat rectangle annotations created in other PDF tools as image annotations for the reason I give above.
  • nikhilraina
    We get a host of partially annotated PDFs from our clients. I can ask my team to annotate al in Zotero but can't expect the same from our clients.

    I get the core of your argument. Thanks again for your help.
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