Extract PDF Comments & Remove Comments
Export PDF comments or remove them selectively
Export PDF comments or remove them selectively
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Export comments, highlights and notes with page numbers to CSV or Markdown
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Remove the password from an encrypted PDF first. Processing focuses on page content, so bookmarks, attachments, forms and signatures may not be preserved. Keep the original and check the result.
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About Extract PDF Comments & Remove Comments
Sticky notes, highlights, strikethroughs and stamps in a PDF are all annotations: separate objects laid on top of the page content. Unless someone has flattened them into the page, they can be listed out, and they can also be lifted off cleanly.
The Extract tab turns comments into records with page, type, author, content, the marked text underneath, modification time, colour and reply relationship, and exports them as CSV, Markdown and JSON. The Remove tab deletes annotations you select by type, author or page range and saves a clean copy of the file.
The text under a highlight, and reply threads
Highlight, underline and strikeout annotations store only the areas to paint, as a set of quadrilaterals (QuadPoints); they don't store the words beneath. The tool reads the page text back inside those boxes to fill the marked-text column, trimming by character proportion when a box cuts a word in half. That puts “which sentence got which remark” on a single row. On a scan with no text layer, the column stays empty.
Replies point to their parent comment through an IRT entry. The export places each reply straight after its parent, and the Markdown file shows threads with indentation. When an annotation's content field is empty but it carries rich text (RC), the markup is stripped and the plain text is used. Dates in PDF form, like D:20240115093000+09'00', become 2024-01-15 09:30:00+09:00.
What the Remove tab takes with it
By default it targets review markup: notes, highlights, shapes, ink, stamps and the like. Links and form fields are removed only if you tick them. Removing an annotation also removes its popup window and its chain of replies. Removing a form field detaches it from the document's form list (AcroForm) and prunes parent fields left with no children.
On save, objects that nothing refers to any more are dropped from the file, so deleted comment text doesn't linger at the end of it. Annotations that were already flattened are part of the page drawing rather than annotations, and this tool can't remove them.
Worked examples
Pulling one reviewer's comments into a table
- Input
A 40-page contract with 62 annotations (30 highlights, 18 notes, 9 replies, 5 links), author filter “Legal”, “Exclude links” on- Output
Legal's highlights and notes, plus their replies, as CSV
Each highlight row carries the highlighted clause in the marked-text column, so you can work through the requested changes from the spreadsheet without flipping back to the PDF.
How to use it
- Add the PDF; the comment list and count appear.
- Set the type and author filters and whether to exclude links, form fields and popups (or pick targets in the Remove tab).
- Export to get CSV, MD and JSON files, or compare the cleaned file with the original in the result preview.
Frequently asked questions
When should I use CSV, Markdown or JSON?
CSV suits sorting and assigning comments in a spreadsheet; Markdown gives page-grouped review notes you can paste into a document or issue tracker; JSON keeps coordinates, colours and reply ids for scripts.
Does removing comments change the document text?
No. Page content streams are left alone and only the annotation objects are removed. The file is saved again, so a digital signature becomes invalid.
What about comments with no author?
Annotations without an author (T) entry are grouped under “no author” and can be selected separately in the filter.
Notes
How annotations and page content are kept apart inside the file is explained in the guide “How PDF Files Work”.
Sources
Last reviewed: