PDF Remove Annotations
Remove annotations from a PDF: choose all annotations, only links, or only comments and markup such as sticky notes, highlights, underlines, strikeouts, drawings, stamps and attached files. Form fields are always kept, and you can limit the cleanup to a page range. The removed objects are deleted from the file, not hidden, which makes it a good last step before sharing a reviewed document.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a comment?
Sticky notes, free text boxes, highlights, underlines, squiggly lines, strikeouts, carets, lines, rectangles, ovals, polygons, ink drawings, stamps, attached files, sound clips, their pop up windows and pending redaction marks. Links and form fields are not comments and stay when you choose this option.
What does links only remove?
Every link annotation, so the clickable areas that open web addresses or jump to other pages are removed. The visible text of a link stays on the page, because it is part of the page content.
What does all remove?
Every annotation except form field widgets, including comments, links, media and 3D annotations, printer marks and watermark annotations. Form fields keep working; use PDF Flatten if you want those turned into page content.
Why are form fields kept?
Form fields are annotations too, but deleting them would break the form. The tool always keeps them, whichever option you choose.
Are the annotations deleted or just hidden?
They are deleted, together with their appearance streams and any attached file data nothing else uses. They cannot be restored from the result, so keep your original if you may need the comments again.
Does it remove highlighted text?
It removes the highlight annotation and leaves the text. Marks that are part of the page content itself, such as a marker stroke on a scanned page, cannot be removed this way.
Can I clean only some pages?
Yes. Enter pages such as 2-5 or 7- in the pages field, and leave it empty to clean the whole document.
What if there is nothing to remove?
When the selected pages have no annotations of the chosen kind, the tool says so and returns no file. That way you never download an unchanged copy by mistake.
Can I clean a password protected PDF?
Enter the password in the password field. The cleaned file is saved without password protection, and the password is not returned.
What are the limits?
Files up to 10 MiB and 200 pages and 30 seconds of processing. Bookmarks and form fields are kept.