Is it possible to undo "flatten comments"?

[samuel_murray]

Hello everyone

I just managed to delete all my comments because I thought "flatten comments" meant to flatten them, not to delete them.

Now I have a PDF left over with various words highlighted in yellow, but all of my hard work is gone -- all of the careful explanations that I wrote at each of those highlights are gone. Or are they? Is there a way to either "unflatten" the comments or to undo the flattening?

I really wish I had known that "flatten comments" is a euphemism for "delete comments irretreivably". All I wanted was to fold the comments in, so that the text is only visible when you hover your mouse over them. What is the command for folding in all comments, if they are currently all folded out?

Thanks!
Samuel

Using PDF XChange 2.5 /211.0 Pro

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Samuel Murray,

I am afraid that the news I will bring are not good for you. Flattening is permanent and unless you have an older copy of the file from before the flattening process or have not yet saved the flattened file - there's no way to recover that info and you will need to recreate it all from the original source. You should have been shown a warning message that flattening is permanent though!

If I may add - in the PDF specification the highlight itself (the yellow oval that appears over the text) is the comment/annotation itself. The additional explanatory text that you are adding to this comment is a "pop-up note" in which you can add additional info but is not the comment itself and just part of the comment object. So "Flatten comments" actually makes the highlights part of the base content of the PDF, and base content can't have pop-up notes - so your "comments" were destroyed and removed.

As for closing all pop-up note windows I don't think there's a quick way to do that and you will have to click each bubble individually.

Regards,
Stefan

[John - Tracker Supp]

However - if you have the PDF-XChange Editor - some or all of the content will be editable ...

[samuel_murray]

In the PDF specification the highlight itself (the yellow oval that appears over the text) is the comment/annotation itself. The additional explanatory text that you are adding to this comment is a "pop-up note" in which you can add additional info but is not the comment itself...

Thanks. Things are not always named in specifications in ways that make most sense. To my mind, the word "comment" implies some kind of text that provides commentary about something, but... clearly the guys who designed the PDF format thought differently. Perhaps when they were at college, their professor gave them "comments" by simply underlining stuff and putting on a stern face.

As for closing all pop-up note windows I don't think there's a quick way to do that and you will have to click each bubble individually.

Actually, I discovered that that is possible. In PDF XChange, go Comments > Show Comments > Close All Pop-ups.

Thanks for your reply
Samuel

==
Perhaps it's an idea to submit an RFE that PDF XChange should save a backup copy whenever the user asks it to do something that can't be undone.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

[jcrben]

However - if you have the PDF-XChange Editor - some or all of the content will be editable ...

Is this true? It sounds like these are truly permanent. I'm playing around with editor 3.0 and the little yellow boxes don't even have any content remaining! I've been web browsing to find out if that is intended since I can't believe that's not a bug, and couldn't find anything so I eventually searched this forum.

If this is not a bug, I second the original poster's note that it should be clearly explained that flattening means getting rid of the comments in the pop-up boxes. I'd been reading that flattening comments 'compresses' them, but really us users don't think of the little box as the comment. It's what is in the box that's the comment. This is particularly the case when you're not dealing with commented highlights but actual comment boxes.

Been having a heck of a time figuring out how to annotate pdfs on my tablet and sync directly with the cloud with no hiccups, but I think I've finally figured out the right Android app.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi jcrben,

What John has stated is true - the comment object itself (e.g. the yellow "conversation bubble") will be there and editable, but the additional information in the pop-up window is unfortunately inevitably lost.

Regards,
Stefan

[jcrben]

What do you mean when you say the conversation bubble is editable? If the information inside it is gone, what is editable?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi jcrben,

I mean that you can still move the bubble itself around, or delete it, but it's nothing more than a vector graphical object now, and the additional information that you entered in the pop-up is gone. Please think of the Icon on the page and the contents in the pop-up note as two separate objects as they are exactly that. It should then be easier to understand why one is still editable and the other one is gone.

Regards,
Stefan

[Puffolino]

I would like to have a "convert to comment" function, which would do the following steps seemlessly with selected "flat" objects:

Create stamp from selection
Delete objects
Insert Stamp into document
Delete stamp from stamp palette

Why this could be fine?
Because comments have a lot of useful functionality (Layers, Author tag,...), you can snap them to grids.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Puffolino,

Unfortunately this can not be easily made to work with all types of base content, and developing a 'partial' feature is not ideal. Also - what information is stored for a base content object and what info is stored for an annotation are quite different, so it's not really possible to reconstruct an annotation in it's original state.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Puffolino]

Thought so

The reason for this feature request is simple - my stamp palette actually contains tons of "test" and "temp" stamps I did in the last weeks...
...but of course it lacks resizing possibilities:
- a rectangle box can be squeezed in size when it has been created as a comment
- when flattened it still can be adjusted in height and width, but the outline border width get distorted
- when the path will be transfered to a stamp, height and width can't be changed seperately anymore