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MrsIHN does some marking for a professional body's exams. They arrive as PDFs, which she freehand annotates/ticks using a Surface Pro and it's magic pen thing, as well as typing detailed comments and notes onto the PDF. The PDF with it's comments and annotations then has to be saved and 'flattened' before being back to the marking people.
She is about to completely lose her $h1t with her current PDF editor, Xodo, as it's started just not saving annotations and/or comments, so she's having to redo a lot of work.
Any recommendations for a good, reliable, PDF editor that will do what she needs? Happy to pay, but don't really want to pay Adobe money as that does tonnes more than she needs really so she'd be paying for stuff she'd never use.
Can she not use Acrobat Reader itself? The comments and form fill & sign features are all we use to send feedback to our sales team or sign off work authorizations. I thought that once a PDF is signed all further editing is blocked including commenting. (I may be wrong here)
Yeah, sorry, I should be clear, when I say comments I don't mean adding comments using the Adobe comments thing, I mean actually writing comments and notes into the body of the PDF itself. Adobe reader won't do that.
I think GoogleDocs allows this doesn't it?
We use PDF Xchange, at work.
The business pays for it, but dont know if it has a free option but it works well.
https://pdf-xchange.eu/pdf-xchange-editor/
Adobe moved to a subscription model some time ago, so you don't need to fork out thousands or even hundreds any more! Acrobat Pro is £15/month and Standard (didn't even know that was a thing, but seems to offer all the annotation features, although you might want to check!!) is £13/month. That's including VAT, and before you put it through the books. If you can't justify that as a business expense, then 🤷♂️ 😃but don’t really want to pay Adobe money
Adobe acrobat DC. It just works.
Word will open and edit .pdf (well, it converts to .docx and then exports to .pdf again anyway). Generally works fine but the formatting can sometimes get a bit shonky on import/conversion.
Microsoft Edge will let you add text and doodles to PDF's - I use it for 'signing' docs and adding text, it could be worth a try?
We use Bluebeam PDF Revu at work.
No idea how much it costs, but I like it. I find it easy to use.
Microsoft Edge will let you add text and doodles to PDF’s – I use it for ‘signing’ docs and adding text, it could be worth a try?
Just had a play, and the adding of stuff is fine but it's the 'flattening' that it's missing, which is embedding the changes into the document itself, rather than them just sitting 'on top' of it, if that makes sense.
We use Bluebeam PDF Revu at work.
No idea how much it costs
A quick Google suggests 'a Lot'.
In edge just annotate and then print to .pdf
In edge just annotate and then print to .pdf
Just tried that, the saved/printed PDF then errors when trying to open it.
Just done a print to pdf (using the Microsoft print to PDF not the Adobe one) and it opened fine here.....
LibreOffice Draw does what I need but probably not so different to Office
Some others here https://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-specific-pdf-tools/?highlight=pdf
Just done a print to pdf (using the Microsoft print to PDF not the Adobe one) and it opened fine here…..
Hmm, fair enough. I was trying on my work laptop, it might be that. I'll have a go on the Surface she'll be using and see what happens.
I've had it with Xodo too!
I use Drawboard and Nitro.
Acrobat Pro 👍
Another one for PDF-XChange - prefer it over Acrobat Pro, easy to use too.
Xodo was good good but they charge, so now I use Drawboard.
Print to PDF as a way of flattening it sounds great. Otherwise I have used Nitro as a way of avoiding the subscription model. It's 150 EUR but that's still less than a year of some subscriptions 🙁
FoxIt?
Can she request the documents in a format that isn't PDF?
What does the "professional body" expect her to do? Print it out, mark it and scan it back in again?
Surprised the exam board doesn't have some kind of standard workflow and approved software.
Adobe products just work, so if Mrs IHN can I'd do with their editor (exchange or reader) even with a subscription. Probably save a lot of faff of trying to annotate and then print to pdf and all that kind of annoyance when you've got lots of docs to work through