Offline Annotation is a feature that helps reviewers to be productive while offline, using familiar editing tools. You can export any document, along with any annotations it has, and review offline in your preferred PDF editor. You can reply to exported annotations and create new annotations. When finished, you then import the annotated rendition into Vault. This feature must be enabled by an Admin.
Multiple users can review and annotate offline concurrently: when they import, Vault adds each new annotation to the document as if the users had annotated through the UI. If any mistake happens, Vault helps users to recover easily with the Undo Last Import option.
Related Permissions
To access the Export Annotations and Import Annotations menu options, you must have a role on the document that includes the Annotate permission. To export, you must also have a security profile that grants that Document: Download Rendition permission.
How to Export for Offline Annotation
To make offline annotations, choose Export Annotations from the document’s Actions menu. If you export and annotate the viewable rendition, Vault will not be able to import the offline annotations.
The Export Annotations action is available even when there are no annotations on the document. This allows you to export an unannotated PDF for offline review and annotation and then import those annotations into Vault.
The document must have a viewable rendition in order to export for annotation.
About Exported Annotations
The Export Annotations option will export all annotations, including anchors, page-level annotations, and resolved annotations. Vault does not include document-level comments in the export.
If some annotations are hidden by filters, select Apply Filters in the dialog to exclude filtered-out annotations. Annotations hidden manually are not excluded.
How to Import Offline Annotations
To import a PDF with offline annotations:
- From the Actions menu, choose Import Annotations.
- Click Choose and select the file that you previously downloaded and annotated.
- Click OK to upload the file.
About Imported Annotations
When importing offline annotations, Vault ignores:
- Edits to existing comments
- Replies to line and anchor annotations
- Deleted annotations
Each line you add in Adobe Acrobat or Reader creates its own annotation, which Vault preserves on import. If you add several lines in Adobe Acrobat , such as to create an X pattern, Vault imports them as multiple overlapping line annotations.
How to Undo Annotation Imports
To undo an import that had mistakes, choose Undo Last Import from the Actions menu.
Note that this option only appears if the last import created new annotations or replies. It only removes annotations created by the latest import.
Supported Offline Actions
The following table details how Vault handles various offline annotation actions:
| Offline Action | Vault Action |
| Replying to a new or exported annotation | Imports as a reply |
| Creating a new annotation | Imports as a new annotation |
| Setting new annotations to Accepted, Canceled, Completed, or Rejected status | Imports new annotation and assigns Resolved status |
| Importing a PDF with annotations made by multiple different users | Attributes all new annotations to the user who imports them |
| Importing drawing markup cloud annotations | Imports as an image annotation |
| Importing drawing markup polygon annotations | Imports as a line annotation |
| Importing drawing markup connected line annotations | Imports as a line annotation |
| Importing drawing markup free form annotations | Imports as an image annotation |
| Importing attached file annotations | Imports as an image annotation |
| Importing stamp tool annotations | Imports as an image annotation |
| Importing recorded audio annotations | Imports as an image annotation |
| Importing sticky comment annotations | Imports as a sticky comment annotation and reverts any formatting to Vault sticky comment formatting |
| Importing insert text at cursor annotations | Imports as an image annotation |
| Creating new links | Not supported; does not import link |
| Revising exported annotations (type, tags, color, etc.) | Not supported; does not update existing annotations |
| Deleting exported annotations | Not supported; does not delete existing annotations |
| Changing exported annotation to Accepted, Canceled, Completed, or Rejected status | Not supported; does not update existing annotations |
| Annotating across versions (exporting from v0.1 and importing to v0.2) | Not supported; no action |
| "Add Checkmark" selected in PDF annotation | Not supported; ignores option on imported annotation |
If Vault fails to import one or more offline annotations, the notification bar will show the number of errors.
Notes
The export feature allows you to annotate offline and import those annotations for an existing document. Vault does not support uploading the exported file as a new document.
Vault cannot distinguish between new and pre-existing Adobe Acrobat annotations, and treats all annotations as new upon upload. We recommend that you do not upload PDF source files with existing Adobe Acrobat annotations, especially if you intend to import and export annotations on that document.
If any of the note annotations in Vault have a Resolved status when a user performs Export Annotations, the Resolved notes receive a status of None.
When a user performs Export Annotations and changes the status of the exported notes to one of the standard Acrobat statuses and then imports the PDF back into Vault, Vault does not apply that status change to the imported notes.
When a user imports a new note created in Acrobat with an Acrobat status, Vault creates the imported note with a status of Resolved.
Supported PDF Editors
Once you’ve downloaded a PDF through the Export Annotations action, you can view and annotate with the following applications
- Adobe Reader : All versions currently supported by Adobe
- Adobe Acrobat : All versions currently supported by Adobe
You may be able to view and add annotations using other applications, but Vault cannot re-import those annotations.