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Remove annotations

Strip comments, highlights, notes and other markup from a PDF.

0 B uploaded to any server

Add a file first.

A reviewed document arrives covered in comments, highlights and sticky notes, and at some point it has to become the clean version again. This tool strips those out, telling you first what it found — how many comments, how many links and how many form fields — so you know what you are about to lose.

Links and form fields are annotations too, technically, and they are kept unless you say otherwise: removing a document's links because you wanted its comments gone is a nasty surprise. The important limit is at the other end: marks that were flattened into the page are not annotations any more, so they cannot be removed here. Highlights baked in by our own Annotate tool are exactly that case.

How it works

  1. Drop in a PDF.
  2. Read the breakdown of comments, links and form fields found.
  3. Decide whether links and form fields should go too.
  4. Remove and download the clean document.

What people use it for

  • Producing the clean version of a document after a round of review.
  • Stripping a reviewer's comments before a file goes to a client.
  • Removing sticky notes and highlights from a document before archiving it.

Frequently asked questions

Is my file uploaded to a server?
No. The file is opened by JavaScript and WebAssembly running inside your own browser tab. It is never uploaded, there is no server-side processing and nothing is stored — closing the tab discards everything.
The highlights are still there.
They were flattened — drawn into the page as ordinary graphics — so they are not annotations any more and nothing here can remove them. Marks made by our own Annotate tool are baked in that way by design. Once flattened, a highlight is part of the artwork.
Will my links stop working?
Only if you ask. Links are technically annotations but are kept by default, because losing a document's navigation while removing its comments is rarely what anyone wants.
What happens to a filled form?
The fields are kept unless you enable that option. If you want the values visible but no longer editable, flatten the form instead of removing it — removing takes the values with the fields.
Is this the same as sanitising?
No. This removes annotations. Sanitize removes the whole hidden layer — metadata, XMP, scripts, actions, attachments — of which annotations are one part.

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