Add notes and comments to a PDF without changing its text

Add a note

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Pin a note in 2 clicks

On our 48-page report test file, the total in table 3 does not match table 4, and the author should check it.

1. Open the PDF. Press N, or click “Add a note” in the tool strip.
2. Optionally pick a colour in the options bar (yellow to start with; 8 to choose from).
3. Click the spot the note is about. A box opens there: “Write a note. Enter places it.”
4. Type the remark, for example “Check this total against table 4”. Shift+Enter starts a new line; Escape cancels.
5. Press Enter. The note becomes an icon at that spot.
6. Save with Ctrl+S.

To read or change a note later, switch to the Select tool (V) and click its icon. The panel shows “Selected · Note” with the text in a box you can edit, its colour, and Delete. Notes other people added in other apps open the same way, so you can answer one by editing it or clear the ones that are dealt with.

Note or text box: which one?

They look similar in the editor and are opposites in the file.

	A note	A text box
Made with	The Note tool, N	The Text tool, T, or Add text to PDF
On the page	A small icon; the text opens on click	The words themselves, printed on the page
In the file	A note annotation on top of the page	Real text in the page content
Prints	The icon, depending on the app; never the text in place	Always, like the rest of the page
Found by search and copy	Not as page text	Yes
Removable by the next person	Yes, in any app that edits comments	Yes, with an editor
Best for	Review remarks, questions, reminders to yourself	A correction, an added date, a remark that must survive paper

The rule of thumb: if the remark is about the document, use a note; if it is part of the document, use text.

What a note is in the file

getPDF writes each note as a standard PDF “text” annotation, the kind every PDF app calls a sticky note or comment: a 20-point icon at the spot you clicked, your colour, your words, and a drawn appearance so the icon shows even in a viewer that draws only what it is given. The icon is flagged to keep its size when you zoom and to stay upright when the page is turned. A note adds about 1 KB to the file; ours added 1,242 bytes.

Where other apps show the text, per their help pages (checked on 11 October 2026): Adobe Acrobat lists notes in its Comments list in the right pane, with filters by type, author and status; Apple’s Preview lists them under View, Highlights and Notes. Browser viewers draw the icon; how and whether they open the text differs between browsers and versions, so for a reviewer who must read every note, send them to an app with a comments list.

Printing: a note is not on paper

A note’s text never prints in place on the page. The icon is flagged as printable, and whether it appears depends on the app’s print setting: Acrobat’s print dialog has a Comments & Forms choice, where “Document and Markups” prints the marks and “Summarize Comments” prints the note texts as a list of their own (Adobe’s help page “Print comments”, checked on 11 October 2026).

If the remark has to survive on paper, make it a text box with T, or keep the note and print a summary from Acrobat.

Flattening removes the words of a note

The save menu has a second choice, Save flattened PDF, which draws marks and notes into the page so nobody can change them. For highlights that works as you would expect. For a note it keeps only the icon: in our test the flattened file had the note’s icon drawn on the page and its text nowhere, neither as a note nor as page text. Flatten a document with notes only when the icons are all you want to keep, and use a text box for anything that must stay readable.

Notes are not private and not permanent

A note is the most visible kind of hidden: anyone who opens the file can read every note, edit it or delete it, in getPDF or any other editor. So:

• never park a password, an account number or a private aside in a note in a file that leaves your hands;
• before sending a reviewed file to someone outside the team, open it, click through the notes, and delete those meant for colleagues only;
• for a file that must say less than it did, notes included, Redact PDF takes out notes and links under each box with everything else; the privacy and protection guide has the full check.

What the Note tool does not do

It has no reply threads, no author or date stamp, no resolved status and no export of a comment list; those are review-platform features, and Acrobat has them. It does not move a placed note by dragging (delete it and place it again). It does not change the page: if the remark must be part of the document, it belongs in a text box. For highlighting the words a note is about, and a colour system for a whole review, see Highlight and comment on a PDF; for everything else, Edit a PDF.