Zotero 8.0 wrong long name of pdf in-file annotations when listed below a file

AlbertoM1
edited March 20, 2026
Hello,
Problem with Zotero 8.0. Windows 11.
How this happen? Zotero creates a long list of words (circled in blu in the screenshot) and thus a long name in the list of annotations below the file even id just 2 words have been highlighted in the pdf (with Adobe) (circled in red in the screenshot)? In the pdf no word of that long list taken by Zotero has any kind of mark. Those words are just the continuation of the paragraph following the highlighted words and the highlighted words are not the title of that paragraph.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u17619333/tcu4yo07m2c0i52ld7sk.png
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    The words circled in blue are the actual extracted highlighted text. The part in red is a comment — i.e., it's supposed to contain what you wrote yourself.

    If these are imported from another PDF reader, that reader may be creating them incorrectly, or there may be some problem with the PDF's text layer. We'd have to see what you have in the other reader and possibly a link to the actual PDF.

    (Note that it's better to just continue your previous thread if it hasn't been resolved.)
  • AlbertoM1
    Sorry for the late reply. Here the screenshot. As you can see it is a normal underlight
    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u17619333/xfx3g91ajl7c8ly20og2.png
  • AlbertoM1
    And it happens too often. It is very frustrating. I am using Adobe Acrobat pro.
    The file is not online. I have added it as Linked-file so only comments are synced. If I can add a link for you to this file even if it is a linkedfile please tell me how.
  • adamsmith
    I'm not sure how you're annotating, but this isn't a standard Acrobat highlight: you can see that every highlight has a little speech bubble next to it in the text (Acrobat's way of signalling an annotation) and it then displays the annotation (i.e. manually written text) under the label "Testo evidenziato" (Highlighted Text in the English version). If you just highlight text, Acrobat just displays "Testo evidenziato" in the comments sidebar, no text at all.

    How are you annotating to get this output?

    The weird text in Zotero still suggests a broken text layer in the PDF, but everything else is working as expected.
  • AlbertoM1
    This is just normal highlighting of Adobe Acrobat.
    You can easily see the Highlighting command on estreme left of the bar menu of the screenshot I just send. The simbol of ah highlighter
    Please show the screenshot of how your adobe acrobat displays annotations
  • AlbertoM1
    Indeed all other highlighting done in the same way (last screenshot I sent, look for "KMnO4 (potassium permanganate)" ) are displayed correctly (first screenshot I Sent).
    This is the clear proof that the problem is not the one you are mentioning and not related to Adobe but to Zotero
  • adamsmith
    Standard highlighting in Acrobat (Pro or otherwise) looks like this:

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2433/p670ketsffkjvl26pdfe.png


    Note the lack of the bubble icon and the lack of text under "Highlighted Text"
  • AlbertoM1
    Not true.
    This is just a difference in display of highlightings between two different adobe version. Mine is 22.0

    Please take a look at my last comment.
    If you were right than all other my highlightings would have been displayed wrongly in Zotero.
    Please give me an explanation of why this happens only with that note and some others and not with all.
  • adamsmith
    edited 23 days ago
    You're misreading what I'm saying. There are two things happening:

    1) Your highlights are generated as highlights with text, aka annotations. That's 100% not standard in Acrobat and it doesn't have anything to do with your version number. I can generate annotations just like yours by, well, manually annotating highlights. I'd be very surprised if Zotero did anything different with any of the other highlights -- they're all annotations, i.e., highlights plus added text.


    2) The highlighted text doesn't extract correctly, but adds a bunch of garbled text, including font information. This is typically due to a broken text layer in the PDF. Nothing in your Acrobat screenhots suggests it's not broken there (recall, the text you see on the right is an annotation that just happens to be the same as the visible highlighted text); Acrobat doesn't display highlighted text in the comment sidebar. Someone can take a look if you link to the file or send a copy to support@zotero.org, but it really is most likely a broken PDF.
  • AlbertoM1
    Everything you reported does not explain why other highlightings I did are displayed ok on Zotero
  • adamsmith
    Yes it does. Text layers can be broken on specific spots, e.g. if text in the XML is escaped improperly around formulas or any number of similar reasons.
  • AlbertoM1
    Ok thanks. How to verify which part of the text in the pdf is broken?
  • AlbertoM1
    In this way we can verify your hypotesis
  • adamsmith
    Someone can take a look if you link to the file or send a copy to support@zotero.org
    You can try what happens when you select, copy & paste that exact text in Acrobat -- if that also produces broken/garbled output it's definitely the text layer, but if it works there it can also just be acrobat being able to fix it/tolerate a broken layer on the fly.
Sign In or Register to comment.