Using the PDF Markup Comments List: One User’s Experience

 I am very pleased to release the first guest post on this blog, by my colleague Dawn Hunter, a freelance editor and an award-winning author.

I [Dawn] use Acrobat’s markup tools, but I don’t use the Summarize Comments function, and neither do the formatters I work with. I have to say it is a neat function and I appreciate Adrienne’s showing it to me.

What we use is the Show Comments List. You can open it by clicking the icon that looks like two speech bubbles on the left of your screen.

The Show Comments List has many functions within it to make checking changes easier. You can sort changes by type, page, author, date, colour, and check status. You can summarize comments and even export them to Word. You can add a reply to a comment that will appear with the comment and show up inside the sticky note in the text. Of course, you can do that inside any sticky note while in the document too.

When I am reviewing a document, I click the text box beside a change in the Show Comments List, and that takes me to the place in the document where the change appears. Even better, it highlights the change with a flashing dotted outline. That solves the problem of the deletion of a single letter being missed–you don’t have to scan to find a tiny red line because you are taken to its location. It isn’t an issue.

The Show Comments List also provides a little check box. Once I verify a change has been made, I can check it off and keep track. The formatters can do the same; once they make a requested change, they can check the box. At the end of my review, I can sort the comments by Checkmark Status and see if I have missed reviewing any changes.

The Markup Tools offer some other useful features. If I make a change, I can make the text bold, italic, superscript, and so on.

Typically, I add some instructions for the formatter when I make certain kinds of changes.

Using popup notes helps to keep the Show Comments pane uncluttered.

For me, using the markup tools has become very quick and easy. I keep the ones I use the most on a separate toolbar to save some drilling down.

Thanks again to Dawn for introducing me to the edit tools, and for taking the time to show us all how to use the comments list and the check boxes they come with. More on customizing toolbars and other shortcuts coming a future post.

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PDF editing mark-up in Adobe Acrobat series:

Basic PDF Mark-up for Copy Editors and Proofreaders

Key Mark-up Techniques for Proofreading PDFs

Edit Tools for Marking up PDFs

Create a Checklist of Your PDF Mark-up in 2 Clicks

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.