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.
I am on edge dev and I would like to see the following improvement for PDF reader.
1. Fix smooth scroll as in https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/4k-smooth-support-pdfs/m-p/1189931
2. Fix selection. Selecting one line should not break into several segment of different height.
Chromium edge
Old edge
3. Fix comment display. There shouldn't be inconsistent spacing within each word.
4. Add support for textbox. Currently both legacy and chromium edge doesn't display such thing in PDF. This is important for reading annotation if the PDF was annotated by some other tools.
5. Add support for pen pressure sensitivity and annotate by pen only.
6. Ink looks distorted (lots of pixel!) before pen is released.
And looks much better after pen is released.
I am using Surface Book 1.
3000x2000 resolution and 200% scalingThis is happening with surface pen on surface book
and mouse drawing on external 4K 200% display.
- I totally agree with you, the selection, comment and drawing is very poor in edge. They are just working to bring features without even taking care of performance. The PDF although with so many options looks appealing but takes very long time just to start loading a pdf when you click on one. It takes around 3 seconds to load pdf which is very annoying. It should be instant. Also the online reader in edge doesn't show loaded pages untill all pages are loaded which it should.
Elliot Kirk The ability to select bookmarks in PDFs like in Chrome browser:
This is a feature that was requested by our internal users very early in testing.
- For longer (book sized) PDFs, you also need to bring back the bookmarks.
Also, it would be fantastic if Edge had the option to remember the last page of a large book you were reading, and resume from there.
PDF versions of manuals are what come to mind for students and the rest of us.
Thanks! - 2 page layout or at least option for continuous vs not scrolling. Trying to swipe down to next page in piano sheet music makes page turns in paper books more appealing. In old Edge it was a dream.
- I have observed that for many PDF files bookmark sidebar is not shown.
- Also, it would be lovely if highlighting options came without right click. Like just when I select certain text, a highlight mini tool bar should come near that text(without right click). It would make my student life much more productive and enjoyable.
Thanks 😊
I really miss the old MS PDF reader. As a student who has a lot of PDFs to go through, I enjoyed the accessibility and ease by which I could highlight and annotate. If I needed to write using my Surface Pen on the PDF, it was a quick and easy process. This update pretty made all those things less convenient. The highlighting tool is now in the context menu (3 step process) whereas the previous version, I could just hover over the highlighted text and click to highlight/add notes. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring this back. Additionally, the drawing tool is not as crisp/clean. The only color I can use is blue. I had more options in the older version. I loved Microsoft Edge because of its unique PDF reader and heavily relied on it too, but I am disheartened with the update and find myself regretting updating my browser at all. Do you know when the next update will be released that includes a better MS PDF reader? Elliot Kirk
I really like the new pdf editor experience, thank you for your work, but it would also be cool to be able to fill forms by adding a text field or sth like that.
- Super excited about these features , it would be nice if there is underline feature like we could select text and underline it. We could do it using pen and Draw but line is not straight line using hand and pen. So ability to select and chose underline and also draw rectangle over text (as alternative to highlight) would be nice.
vygadekaReza_Ameri-Archived these are pretty cool suggestions. Any reason why you would prefer drawing rectangles over drawing a highlight?
vygadeka I collect these feedbacks from community and they need both, while highlight is preferred and recommended but sometimes people want to differentiate and they draw rectangle too. This is another way to highlight a text without covering it with color. This is one of behavior that people are using when reading books or note, they highlight it, draw underline or draw rectangle over it.
Hi,
we need a "attach to email" button.
many of our users need that , and used it in Internet Explorer with Adobe Reader Plug-In.
the windows "share to" button is useless, because our mail client is Outlook 2016 (Win32 app).
thank you
- This sounds like a great feedback for the feedback hub app because I think Outlook 2016 or Outlook 365 must be added as an option in the Windows 10 share which Edge also uses.
- vygadeka
Ben42 Outlook Win32 app is supported in Windows Share utility. Maybe this can help - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-tosadd-outlook-desktop-to-the-windows-10-share/f80809a2-9356-45e6-8877-bbd2840720aa
I hope they get all the previous functions back soon, especially the appearance of instant option as soon the text gets highlighted (ability to highlight text with various colors, instant translation, etc but I think those are enough. Or at least please create a PDF dedicated Microsoft app integrated with Ms Office. It's always bugged me when Microsoft didn't release PDF oriented apps since they integrated the last PDF app with Microsoft Edge, such a huge waste potential to see users like me using a non-Microsoft app which not always seamless as if it was made by Microsoft. The Increasing demand for reading articles getting higher these days, and there wasn't good Stable free PDF reader/editor. Elliot Kirk
