STEP 01
Open the document
Drop the PDF in. It loads.
Free PDF tool · no account
Mark up a PDF without printing it
Highlight, strike through, draw, add shapes. Everything you would do with a pen, on screen, and nothing gets uploaded.
The EveryTask PDF editorOpen the editor
The whole flow
A clear path from file to finished document
Highlight, strike through, draw, add shapes. Everything you would do with a pen, on screen, and nothing gets uploaded.
STEP 02
Mark it up
Drag over text to highlight or strike through. Draw freehand, add boxes and arrows.
STEP 03
Send it back
Download the marked-up file and reply with it.
Step by step
How to annotate a pdf
Everything you need is ready in the browser.
Open the document
Drop the PDF in. It loads.
Mark it up
Drag over text to highlight or strike through. Draw freehand, add boxes and arrows.
Send it back
Download the marked-up file and reply with it.
How do you mark up a PDF for review?
Highlight what matters, strike through what should go, and draw to point at things a highlight cannot reach.
- Highlight, drag across text. Use one color consistently, or color by meaning.
- Strike through, mark something for deletion without removing it.
- Draw, circle a figure, arrow at a diagram, ring the thing on the chart.
- Shapes, box a section, rule a line under a total.
The useful discipline is consistency. Reviewers who highlight in three colors with no system produce a document the author has to decode. One color for "must change", another for "consider", stated once at the top, saves an email exchange.
What is the difference between annotating and editing?
Annotation adds a layer of comment on top. Editing changes what the document says. That distinction matters more than it sounds.
When you highlight a clause, the clause is untouched. Anyone opening the file sees the original with your mark on it, and can tell which is which. That is the point of a review: showing what you think without altering what you were sent.
Editing rewrites. The next reader sees your version with no indication of what was there before. For your own document that is what you want. For a contract somebody sent you, changing the text and returning it silently is a good way to lose trust.
Do annotations survive in other PDF readers?
Yes. Marks are written into the file rather than stored beside it, so they open the same way everywhere.
This is worth checking with any annotation tool, because some store marks in their own database and show them only in their own viewer. Send that file to somebody using anything else and it arrives clean, with all your comments invisible. You find out when they reply asking what you meant.
Marks written into the document travel with it, in Acrobat, in a browser, in Preview on a Mac, and when printed.
What should you use each mark for?
Highlighting is for "look at this". Striking through is for "this should go". Drawing is for everything a rectangle of color cannot say.
The mistake most reviewers make is highlighting everything they read carefully, which turns the document yellow and communicates nothing. A highlight is a signal, and signals only work when they are rare.
Strike-through is more precise than a highlight and underused. It says exactly what should happen to the text, needs no accompanying note, and cannot be misread as approval, which a highlight sometimes is.
Drawing earns its place on anything that is not a paragraph. A number in a table, a region of a chart, the gap between two columns where something is missing. Text tools cannot point at the absence of something; an arrow can.
How should you send a marked-up document back?
Send the whole file rather than screenshots, and say what the colors mean if you used more than one.
Screenshots of annotated pages lose the ability to search, cannot be scrolled, and force the author to work out which page they came from. The file is smaller and more useful.
A short covering note helps more than people expect: how many things need changing, whether anything blocks approval, and what the colors mean. Fourteen highlights with no explanation is a puzzle. "Six changes, the two in red are blockers" is a task.
Before you start
What this tool does not do
It does not thread comments. Marks live on the page; there is no reply-and-resolve conversation in the free editor. That exists in a workspace, where a document has a team around it.
It does not track who annotated what. In the free editor there is no identity, so every mark is anonymous. For a review where attribution matters, that is a real limitation.
It does not compare two versions. Showing what changed between drafts is a different tool.
Ready to work on your PDF?
Open the editor to work on your file in the browser, with no account or watermark.
Got questions?
Annotate a PDF answers
Can I remove an annotation?
Yes, while you are in the editor. Once downloaded the marks are part of the file.
Will highlights print?
Yes. They are part of the page, so they print as they appear.
Can I annotate a scanned document?
You can draw, add shapes and add text on it. Highlighting text needs selectable text, which a scan does not have.
Does annotating change the original text?
No. Marks sit on top and the underlying content is untouched.
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