Remove comments, links and form fields from a PDF

Comments, highlights, links and form fields are not part of a page’s content. They are separate objects that a reader draws on top of it, which is why deleting them changes nothing about the document’s text, layout or pagination — and why this is the tool to reach for before a marked-up draft leaves the building. The one thing to know before you run it: form fields hold the values somebody typed, so removing the fields removes the answers with them.

Removing form fields removes what was typed into them. A completed application form comes back blank, because the answers live in the fields rather than on the page. Flatten the form first if you want the answers kept as ordinary printed text, then strip whatever is left.

Strip the annotations

No account. Your upload is deleted after 2 hours, the result after 24 hours.

How it works

  1. Decide what has to go. Everything, or just the mark-up, or just the links, or just the form fields. If the file is a completed form and the answers matter, stop here and flatten it first.
  2. Run it. Every page is checked. The pages themselves are left exactly as they were: nothing is redrawn, nothing is re-encoded and the file does not change size in any meaningful way.
  3. Read the count. The result says what went — so many comments, so many links, so many form fields and their values. If it says there was nothing of that kind, what you are looking at was drawn into the page rather than attached to it.

What the options do

The form above lists the options this tool is running today, straight from the server. This is what they are for.

What to remove
Four choices, and they mean different things to different problems. Comments and mark-up covers everything somebody added by way of review: sticky notes, highlights, strikeout, underline, ink drawn with a stylus, stamps, callouts, measurements and the pop-up windows that hang off them. Links removes the clickable areas — internal jumps and external URLs alike — which is what you want when a document is going to print, or when links point at an intranet nobody outside can reach. Form fields removes the interactive controls, and with them the document’s form definition, so the values typed into it go too. Everything does all three at once, and is the right answer for a marked-up draft that is going out as a finished document. Whichever you choose, the pages’ own content is untouched.

What this tool does not do

  • Removing form fields removes what was typed into them. A completed application form comes back blank, because the answers live in the fields rather than on the page. Flatten the form first if you want the answers kept as ordinary printed text, then strip whatever is left.
  • It does not touch anything drawn into the page. A highlighter mark that was on the paper before it was scanned, a signature drawn as page content, a comment that has already been flattened — all of those are part of the page and stay exactly where they are.
  • It is not redaction. It removes the note somebody attached to a passage; the passage itself is untouched, and so is anything the note was quoting.
  • There is no per-page, per-author or per-type selection beyond the four choices. It is all pages, everyone’s comments, and it cannot keep one reviewer’s notes while dropping another’s.
  • Removing links removes the clickable area, not the words. A line that reads “see example.com” still reads that way; it simply stops being clickable.
  • Bookmarks, the document outline, metadata and files embedded in the document itself are not annotations and are left alone. A file attached to a particular page is an annotation and does go with the mark-up; edit metadata is what changes the document’s properties.

What happens to your file

The file is uploaded because Remove annotations from PDF runs on our server rather than in the browser tab. It is kept for at most 2 hours and the result you download for 24 hours, then a scheduled job deletes both — a job has to be able to read the file while it runs, and you have to be able to retry a failed conversion without re-uploading. Neither needs longer.

Nothing about the contents is logged, and no one reads your documents. The retention page lists the same numbers the code enforces, and the privacy policy says who can reach the storage they sit in.

Questions

Will this delete what people typed into the form?
Yes, if you remove form fields or choose everything. The values are stored in the fields, not painted onto the page, so deleting the fields deletes the answers — which is exactly right when you are clearing a template, and a disaster when you meant to keep a completed one.
How do I keep the form answers but stop anyone editing them?
Flatten the document first. Flattening turns each field’s current appearance into ordinary page content, so the answers become part of the page and can be read but not changed. After that you can strip the remaining annotations safely, because there are no fields left to lose.
It says there was nothing to remove, but I can see highlights.
Then those marks are part of the page rather than annotations on it. That happens with a scan of paper somebody highlighted by hand, with a file that has already been flattened, and with a document exported from software that draws its own mark-up. Nothing here can separate them from the page.
Does removing a comment remove the text it was about?
No. A comment is anchored to a position on the page and holds its own note; the sentence underneath belongs to the document and is untouched. If the concern is what the note said about the text, the note is gone — if the concern is the text itself, this is the wrong tool.
Can I remove only one reviewer’s comments?
No. The choice is by kind — mark-up, links, form fields — not by who made it. Removing mark-up takes everybody’s.
Does this strip the author name and other properties?
No. Document properties are metadata, stored on the document rather than on the pages, and this does not touch them. Edit metadata changes the title, author, subject and keywords.