18

I just finished proofreading 100 pages of a book in Okular on Mint 13 with KDE and submitted it to the editor. Naturally, none of the comments show up on the editors machine when he opens it. He has the latest version of Acrobat running on Windows 7. Is there any way to make the notes transfer across? Failing that, does anyone have an idea for a way to export them to a text document or something?

5 Answers 5

2

The annotations done in Okular are stored in the ~/.kde/share/apps/okular/docdata folder.

There should be a .xml file for each annotated pdf.

In the future, you may want to use PDF X-Change viewer of Foxit Reader for Windows through Wine. These sava annotations in the pdf itself and are visible in Adobe Reader or any other pdf reader for that matter.

3
  • Thanks. Now all I've got to do is figure out a way to get it back into the pdf file itself.
    – Yitzchak
    Feb 27, 2013 at 12:42
  • See this link. Hope it helps.
    – To Do
    Feb 27, 2013 at 13:07
  • Okular Version 1.3.3 on Ubuntu 18.04, the xml files are located in ~/.local/share/okular/docdata but if you open them, they don't seem to be the content of any annotation. Jun 18, 2019 at 18:07
9

There doesn't seem to be any way to do so within Okular, but you can save Okular annotations back into pdf format with Xournal by "printing to a file":

enter image description here enter image description here

1
  • Among all the solutions, this is the only one that worked with me. In Okular, I printed the file as pdf and opened the new pdf file in Windows with Acrobat reader and I found the highlights and notes. Thanks.
    – Nasser
    Jun 23, 2016 at 1:05
6

The more recent releases of Okular save the annotations directly into the PDF.

For example, on Ubuntu, if you go to the Ubuntu Software Center and install Okular, then it should work fine out of the box.

(for more details, see here)

3
  • 4
    To save the annotation in pdf, you should use "save as...", otherwise it's not saved.
    – xuhdev
    Jul 18, 2015 at 0:23
  • Then it's interesting that a more-highly upvoted answer written 1 year later says it's not possible! Sep 26, 2021 at 0:32
  • 2
    That is because it worked with okular 1.6, but not 1.11. Wonder why …
    – Dirk
    Oct 3, 2021 at 21:45
2

I'm using Okular 0.19.3 on Linux Mint 17.1.

I added lots on annotations, then quit. Open again with Okular, notes are there, good. Open with Adobe Reader, NO notes visible :(

Opened again with Okular, did print to a pdf file. Opened output file of print function with Adobe Reader, notes are visible, Yea :)

Will they be there on android and Mac pdf file viewers? Yes, on both platforms.

I don't have a Windows system readily available to confirm but likely yes there also.

paul

2
  • Using Okular Version 1.3.3 on Ubuntu 18.04, printing the annotated version into PDF does work, but it leaves the annotations non-editable. Jun 18, 2019 at 18:02
  • That's the way, printing to PDF. Of course, this as said leaves the annotations not editable anymore, but you would always keep the original annotated version which you can use with Okular.
    – umbe1987
    Jan 17 at 16:13
0

I've tried Xournal++ following coming across this thread: https://askubuntu.com/a/1314422/974393 and it does the job as expected. Annotations are saved in PDF and changes are visible in other editors.

Xournal++ is available on Snap store too.

I hope it helps.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .