Highlighting or adding sticky notes to pdfs

Kendra_Nixon
How do you add highlights or sticky notes in pdfs? I have searched the forum and found threads that say you can and others that say you can't. I am not overly computer savvy and not sure I am even interpreting people's posts correctly (one talked about a chickenfoot??)

I would like to do two things: 1.) When I open a stored PDF file in zotero, I want to be able to edit it (e.g., add highlights or sticky notes). Currently, there is no annotation tools that I can find once the file is opened. Is editing a pdf in zotero possible? 2.) When I link to a stored pdf (say from my own hard drive), I can't see the highlighting or sticky notes that I made to the stored pdf when I open up in zotero. Is this not possible?

Can someone assist?
  • arggem
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/28611/position-of-buttons-in-annotations/#Item_2
  • adamsmith
    @arggem - I understand Kendra to be referring to PDFs, not snapshots.

    Zotero doesn't do anything except save your PDFs.
    They open in the PDF viewer specified in Firefox or your operating system. There are many choices (e.g. Preview on Mac, Adobe Pro, pdf Xchange, or FoxIt on Windows) of pdf viewers that will allow you to save annotations to PDFs.

    Annotations saved to pdfs are not affected by Zotero. If you don't see them that's most likely a setting in the program you use for viewing PDFs.
  • arggem
    Ahh, my bad. Sorry.
  • Kendra_Nixon
    Thank you - this is very helpful!
  • JimSkane
    Hey adamsmith,

    The solution you have mentioned
    many choices (e.g. Preview on Mac, Adobe Pro, pdf Xchange, or FoxIt on Windows) . Do these replace the viewer inside of firefox so that you can edit inside the viewer window? Or do you need to move the file in and out of zotero?

    thanks for your help
    Jim
  • adamsmith
    those are two different questions if I understand you correctly:
    1. Some of these programs - e.g. pdfXchange or Adobe Pro - do have Firefox plugins so you can set them to open PDFs in Firefox instead of the native Firefox app (pdf.js)

    2. Even if you don't do this, you don't have to move files in and out of Zotero: You just open them with the external viewer (e.g. by using right-click --> open in external viewer; there are also ways to make that the default behavior) annotate & save and the file will be saved to Zotero.
  • JimSkane
    You Rock adamsmith!
Sign In or Register to comment.