Tutorials

Search PDF comments effectively

by Brie Gyncild and Andrew Faulkner

If your project includes multiple thoughtful reviewers, you may receive dozens or even hundreds of comments on a page. Search comments in Adobe® Acrobat® 7.0 to find the ones that are relevant for specific tasks, and use other sorting features to hide comments you’ve already addressed or that don’t relate to the task at hand. Acrobat gives you the flexibility to handle comments efficiently, using the workflow best suited for your tasks.

Acrobat searches all types of PDF comments with the click of a button.

Display comments

To display the comments in the PDF file:

1. Click the Comments tab on the left side of the screen, or choose Comments > Show Comments List. Acrobat displays the comments list at the bottom of the screen.
2. Using the Comments list, you can sort, delete, reply to, or change the status of comments. If you edit the text in the Comments List, Acrobat also updates the text in the corresponding comment in the document window. When you select a comment in the list, the comment appears in context in the document pane (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Acrobat lists all the comments in the PDF file. Each comment includes the reviewer’s name and an icon indicating the type of comment.

Search for specific comments

Click Search in the Comments List toolbar. In the Search PDF window, enter the text you want to search for. You can type a reviewer’s name, or type a word or set of words that you want to find. For example, if you want to view comments about a document’s color, you may search for the word “color.” Then, click Search Comments (Figure 2).

Tip: Keep in mind that not all reviewers refer to a subject in the same way. For example, comments about color may not include the word color if reviewers refer to the tint, shade, or hue instead. You may need to search multiple times to find all the relevant comments. If you work on a regular publication, such as a monthly magazine, with the same reviewers each time, you may want to ask reviewers to use keywords such as “color,” “graphics,” “typography,” and “text” to identify the subject of a comment.

Figure 2: Type a word or phrase in the Search PDF window, and then click Search Comments.

View relevant comments

Acrobat displays the search results in the Search PDF window (Figure 3). Each instance listed is linked to the associated comment and the page it appears on. Click an instance to go to that comment; it will appear in the document pane and be selected in the Comments List.

Tip: To see which page a comment refers to, hover the mouse over the instance in the Results section of the Search PDF window.

Figure 3: Acrobat lists the comments that include your search criteria. Click one of the results to display that comment in context.

Sort comments

You can hide all but the search results in the Comments List.

1. Click each instance in the Search PDF window, and then click the box next to it in the Comments List so that a check mark appears.
2. When you’ve selected all the search results, including any results from additional searches using different keywords, choose Show > Show By Checked State > Checked. Acrobat displays only those comments with check marks (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Use the “Show by checked state” to view only the comments with check marks.

Commands in the Show and Sort By menus arrange comments by page, reviewer, comment type, date, status, and other criteria. You can also use check marks to indicate comments you’ve addressed, and then choose to show only unchecked comments.