A document comes back from review covered in yellow highlights, sticky notes, struck-out sentences and an "Approved" stamp. You've dealt with the feedback, and now you want to send the final version without everyone's working notes on it.
Delete annotations removes that markup by type, so you can clear the comments and keep, say, the links. It runs in your browser and the file isn't uploaded.
Comments sit on top of the page
In a PDF, the page content (the text, lines and images you'd see on a printout) is stored separately from annotations. An annotation is an object attached to a page: a highlight, a sticky note, a typed text box, a freehand drawing, a stamp, a link, a file attachment. Each one has a type, a position and its own small drawing, and the viewer paints it over the page.
That separation is why removing comments is clean. Take an annotation away and the page underneath is exactly as it was, because the highlight never changed the text. It only sat on it.
It also explains when removal doesn't work. If the markup has been flattened, or the file was printed to PDF after people commented on it, the highlights and notes were drawn into the page content and are no longer annotations. No annotation remover can tell them apart from the rest of the page. The same goes for a Word document exported with comments showing in the margin: those balloons are part of the page. Go back to the Word file, delete the comments or set the Review tab's markup display to No Markup, and export again.
Removing annotations step by step
- Open Delete annotations and add the PDF. It's scanned straight away, and you'll see something like "14 annotations found. Choose what to remove:".
- Look at the list of types, each with its count: "Highlight", "Strikeout", "Underline", "Ink / Draw", "Square", "Circle", "Line / Arrow", "Link", "Text" (sticky notes), "Free text", "Popup / Comment", "Stamp", "File attachment" and a few more. All of them are ticked to start with.
- Untick anything you want to keep. "All" ticks or unticks the whole list at once.
- To clean only some pages, type them in the "Pages" box, for example 1-3, 7, or even or odd. Leave it empty for the whole document.
- Click "Remove annotations" and download the file, saved as cleaned-yourfile.pdf.
If none of the ticked types exist on the chosen pages, you'll get "No annotations of the selected types were found on those pages. Nothing was changed." rather than an identical copy.
Pop-up notes follow their parent. When you remove a highlight that had a comment attached, its pop-up goes too, so you don't end up with orphaned comment windows.
Decide what to keep before you click
The defaults remove everything except form fields, and a few of those types deserve a second look.
Links are annotations too. Every clickable web link and every clickable entry on a contents page is a Link annotation, and "Link" is ticked by default. If you only want the review markup gone, untick it. The bookmarks in the side panel are a different structure and aren't touched either way.
Signatures can be annotations. Many apps add a drawn or pasted signature as a stamp or an ink drawing. If the PDF was signed that way, removing "Stamp" or "Ink / Draw" can take the signature with it. Check the preview of the result before you send anything.
"Free text" means text boxes typed onto the page. People sometimes fill in a form that has no real fields by typing text boxes over the blanks, and removing Free text erases their answers.
"Other" covers rarer things such as embedded media, 3D content and redaction marks that were drawn but never applied. Unapplied redaction marks deserve a moment: they mean someone planned to remove text and didn't finish, so the text underneath is still there. Removing the marks doesn't hide it. The guide to redacting a PDF properly covers doing it right.
Form fields are kept unless you open "More options" and tick "Form fields". Removing them deletes the fields and the answers typed into them, and if the file has fields, a warning appears when you tick it.
Gone from view isn't the same as erased
Delete annotations takes each annotation off its page, so no viewer will show it, list it in a comments panel or print it. The annotation objects themselves, including any comment text, can still be sitting unused inside the file's data, where someone with a PDF inspection tool could find them.
For an ordinary review cycle that doesn't matter. If the comments were sensitive (internal pricing remarks, a lawyer's notes on a contract), run the cleaned file through Compress PDF afterwards. Every compression run removes objects the file no longer uses.
While you're at it, remember that comments aren't the only place a name can hide. The document's own properties often hold the author's name too, and the guide to editing PDF metadata shows how to clear them.
Delete or flatten
Deleting and flattening are opposites. Deleting throws the markup away. Flattening keeps it but draws it permanently into the page, so it can't be moved or edited. If you want a stamp and a signature to stay but be fixed in place, use Flatten PDF rather than this tool. If you want a clean copy with no trace of the review, delete.
One combination works well for contracts: delete the review comments here with "Stamp" and "Ink / Draw" unticked, then flatten the result so the signature can't be lifted off.
To check the result, open it in Adobe Acrobat Reader and open the Comments panel, which lists the comments and markup in a file. An empty list (or just the types you chose to keep) means it worked.
Also useful: Flatten PDF · Compress PDF
