Forum Discussion
MicrosoftMicrosoft Edge extends tools for the PDF reader
The integrated PDF reader in the legacy Microsoft Edge browser is deeply loved by many of you and we have been getting feedback about the availability of those features in the new version of Microsoft Edge. We are working on adding your favorite annotations tools to the PDF reader in Microsoft Edge right now and wanted to provide you an update on our work.
Inking on PDF files
Today you can use built-in inking tools when you open PDF files in the new Microsoft Edge. This allows you to take notes, fill out and sign PDF forms. Click on the Draw button from the toolbar to start writing; you can use a digital pen, touch or a mouse. You can use the Erase button to start erasing the strokes. If you are using a digital pen with a back-button, you can use that to erase while in draw mode.
We have also added the ability to change the color and width of the lines you are drawing. To open the new customization panel, just click or tap the "“ button attached to the Draw tool. This new color and stroke width selector are already available in the Canary and Dev channels and will make their way to the Stable channel in Microsoft Edge version 83.
highlighter selection panel
Text highlight support
Highlighting important text while reading PDFs is a very common activity especially for students reading books or research papers in PDF format. We have added the ability to highlight text in PDF files. You can access this feature today in the Canary, Dev and Beta channels via the context menu. Just select any piece of text on a PDF document that you want to highlight, right click to invoke the context menu and you will find the option to highlight the text. You can even choose from four different colors for the highlighters.
highlighter in context menu
We will continue to improve the highlighting experience in PDF by making it accessible directly from the PDF toolbar. Click or tap Highlight in the toolbar to get started. Then use your digital pen or mouse over the text you want to highlight. You can also change the color of the highlight by clicking the "“ button attached to the Highlight tool. This will open a color panel where you can select the color of your choice. The highlight tool is available in the PDF toolbar in Canary and Dev channels. You can expect to see it roll out to more channels in upcoming releases.
multi color highlights
What’s next
We know that many of you love the PDF reader in Microsoft Edge and we’ve heard a lot of feedback and requests for annotations support. We will be working on improving the ability to do light editing on PDF files which would make you productive right within the browser. As part of this effort, the team will be working on these scenarios:
- Improving the experience of reading text notes already present in a PDF.
- Ability to add text notes on a PDF.
Let us know in what scenarios you use annotations on PDFs and what kind of toolset you would want to see in Microsoft Edge PDF reader. This would help us expand the range of tools we have for PDFs with what is most important for you.
Elliot Kirk It would be convenient to be able to create detailed reviews of pdf's of scientific papers via "comments" or notes linked to specific parts of the text, and not only be able to see these and edit these in a sidebar but also be able to share these comments or print them out separately from the pdf. I know this is possible in Adobe Acrobat Reader. In my version of Edge, however, I can only create comments but cannot view them in a sidebar or print them out or share them separate from the pdf. I get the impression that this, at least the display of comments in a sidebar, used to be possible.
Elliot Kirk
I'm using pdf reader to read textbooks as a college student and these two features would greatly help:
1. Enabling insertion of hyperlinks in the pdf
2. Opening other dictionary apps apart from the built-in one, e.g. reverso, for other languagesElliot Kirk when is the "Attachments: Show file attachments" function expected to be integrated?
The 'Draw with touch' feature on Microsoft Edge appears to have broken on my laptop. Previously it worked fine but in the last week it automatically switches itself off whenever I try to draw on the touchscreen, even when I click it back on. Any solutions?
Elliot Kirk as best I can tell there's no way to get the PDF toolbar back if you accidentally unpin it. I tried hovering at the top of the doc per a different help article and that didn't work; can't find any options for it in the upper right "..." menu, either.
I've made comments on a PDF saved to disk and while the tab is showing a * to designate that there are unsaved changes, if I try to close the tab is just gives an "unsaved changes will be deleted; you sure about this?" dialog instead of a "do you want to save changes" prompt. This doesn't seem to be working as intended
Edit: Of course the split-second after i posted this i tried ctrl+s and that worked to save the changes. that said, the underlying problem of not being able to pull the toolbar back up is still there
- Really appreciate the effort on inking option of the PDF reader in Ms. Edge. It will be prefect if the choices of thickness of the inking are more cause sometime it will be too thick for me when I'm marking on my pdf. Another one is the smoothness of the ink. If I compare the word written by inking option I use in Edge to the one I use in Powerpoint or Word, I found they have big different in terms of smoothness causing the word I written on Edge appear more rough and ugly. Hopefully have improvement on these features and it will be a 5 star PDF reader for me. Love from KT.
Elliot Kirk do you know if/when there will be support for 3D PDFs in the EDGE PDF viewer?
I am not sure why pdf viewer in edge has not enough keyword shortcuts like Draw and Erase or even highlight. there is not also a way for me to make it by my own. actually This feature (PDF viewer and draw) is why I migrated from chrome to edge but is bothering me not having this simple command.
Dear Sir/Madam
I am in the process of conducting researches from a book which I have downloaded in both word and pdf formats. My researches require me to extract the contents from the book to include 2 groups or strings of words from some relevant text.
The following are 2 examples:
Example 1
First group (string): not only
Second group (string): but also
Relevant text 1:
He is not only intelligent but also funny.
Relevant text 2:
Mr X is not only an actor but also a philanthropist.
Example 2
First group: scarcely
Second group: when
Relevant text 1:
I had scarcely walked in the door when I got an urgent call and had to run right back out again.
Relevant text 2:
Scarcely had the teacher seen the student when he started studying.
My question is, how would I be able to extract the relevant text of the desired strings of words which are normally consisted of 2 groupings as demonstrated in the above 2 examples. Preferably, I would like to receive instructions on how to do so from both a word document and a pdf document.
I would like to thank you in advance.
Regards
Preston ChowElliot Kirk apologies if this post is so old you're not tracking comments. but the biggest improvement for me would be being able to colourise the pdf document background - I prefer reading with non-white backgrounds for a number of reasons and like to switch to a yellow-sludgey colour. For now I have to stick to xodo but would love if Edge could do this.
