PDFs: read, annotate, summarise

Read a PDF right in the note, mark it up, and add a summary page that lists every mark with a link to it.

A PDF in the note

A PDF you attach appears in the note as a card. To choose how much of it the note shows, choose Display As from the card's menu:

Title — one line with its badge, name and size.
One Page — one page of it.
All Pages — every page, one under the other.

A PDF shown as a page sits against the left margin, lined up with the pictures and files around it.

Open and annotate a PDF

Click or tap the PDF card, or choose Open and annotate PDF from its menu. The PDF opens in NotaBene's own viewer, with the annotation tools in its bar.

Highlight, underline or strike out text: select the words, then choose what to do with them.
Comment on a selection to add a note to a passage.
Draw freehand with Apple Pencil, a mouse or a trackpad.

Words in a table are selected with one drag, like any other text — no need to click into the cell first.

To select words in a table, touch and hold a word, then move your finger without lifting it to extend the selection. Drag the two handles to adjust it afterwards; the menu offers Copy.

With a trackpad, the pointer is an I-beam over words in a table: click and drag to select them, click twice for a word or three times for the line, and press ⌘C to copy.

The annotation button lists every highlight, comment and drawing in the PDF. Pick one to jump to it.

Your marks stay exactly as you made them: open the PDF again, however many times, and every line of ink is the same line it was the first time.

Save your annotations

Choose ✓ to save your annotations and close the PDF. (✕ closes it too, and asks first about annotations you haven't saved.)
NotaBene asks Save annotations? Choose Overwrite Original PDF to replace the file in the note, or Save Annotated Copy to put an annotated copy into the note above the original.

When you save, a summary page is added to the PDF. It lists every annotation, page by page, and every entry is a link: click or tap it and the PDF scrolls to the marked passage, which lights up in blue for a moment. Each Page N heading goes to its page, and the small blue p. 2 › after a quote shows that the line can be followed. They are ordinary links in the PDF, so they also work in Preview, in Acrobat, or in a PDF you send by mail. The page is written in the app's language.

If ✓ can't save — for example, on the Mac, when you've chosen another note while the PDF window stayed open — it says Couldn't Save Annotations instead of closing as if it had. Keep Editing returns you to the PDF. Close sets your annotations aside, and the next time you open the PDF from its note, NotaBene offers them back.

If NotaBene quits while you annotate

If the app crashes or the system closes it while you're annotating, open the same PDF again and NotaBene asks Restore Unsaved Annotations?

Restore brings back every highlight, comment, underline and drawing since you last chose ✓ — on the iPad, a pencil drawing down to its last stroke. They come back unsaved: ✓ saves them, ✕ asks about them.
Discard throws them away.

Unsaved annotations are kept on this device only, and are gone once you save or discard them, or after 30 days. If the PDF was changed on another device in the meantime, nothing is offered, because those marks belong to a different version.

Print a PDF

Choose the printer button in the annotation bar, or press ⌘P. What prints is the PDF as you see it: every highlight, comment and drawing, saved or not, and the summary page if it has one. The highlights from finding text are not printed.

The print panel shows a preview, and PDF ▾ ▸ Save as PDF saves a copy instead of printing.

Tip: Press ⌘F to find words in an open PDF. Search also looks inside every attached PDF, and inside your highlights.