Cannot retrieve annotations I took in an external pdf reader.

tomrav
As a new Zotero user, I'm facing a basic problem but I can't seem to find a way around it, despite all my research on the net!

I take notes on my pdf files from different readers (mainly the one on my e-ink tablet and Ubuntu's default pdf reader). The problem is that I can't get these annotations into Zotero: they aren't visible from the Zotero reader, and I can't extract them.

Is there a way to do this? Is there a setting I haven't thought of?

Thanks in advance for your help!
  • dstillman
    The Zotero PDF reader should show any standard annotations saved to the file, and you can move them into Zotero from File → Import Annotations. If the external reader is saving annotations to a sidecar file or in some other non-standard format, they wouldn't show up.

    Can you email one of the files to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
  • tomrav
    Finally, I'm able to recover the annotations I've taken from external pdf readers, when I haven't taken handwritten notes. When handwritten notes have been taken, the pdf file must be corrupted because the annotations are no longer visible in Zotero.
  • scotto
    Same problem here. Once I've added handwriting annotations to a pdf with an external pdf reader, Zotero can't import any annotations from that pdf. This is true even after I delete the ink in the external editor, save it, and restart Zotero.

    In my case, I've added handwriting with PDF Xchange Editor.

    I sent an example to support@zotero.org
  • dstillman
    @scotto: I'm not quite clear what you're reporting. You sent two copies of the PDF. The first has an ink annotation and a text annotation. The other, where you say you've deleted ink annotations, has no annotations in it whatsoever. @martynas_b can take a look at why the ink annotation isn't showing up, but if you made other annotations (e.g., highlights or notes), they weren't saved to the actual file.

    (And to be clear, Import Annotations isn't relevant if annotations don't show up in the sidebar at all, so that's the relevant part.)
  • martynas_b
    edited August 7, 2023
    Ink annotations made with other viewers currently only show up on the page, but not in the annotations sidebar.

    And they can't be imported.
  • scotto
    edited August 12, 2023
    It looks like I was mistaken.

    For some reason, when I had ink from an external program in the pdf, I thought that the non-ink annotations -- highlights -- from that program were not importable. That is, I noticed that File->Import Annotations was grayed out, and when I clicked this menu item anyway, nothing happened. The external program's highlights remained not editable or deletable within Zotero.

    But I just tried to reproduce that problem, and don't see it now: Sorry for the false alarm.
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