Microsoft Edge extends tools for the PDF reader

Microsoft

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. 

write on PDFswrite on PDFs

 

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 "down arrow icon.png“ 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 panelhighlighter 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 menuhighlighter 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 "down arrow icon.png“ button attached to the Highlight tool. This will open 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 highlightsmulti 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 supportWe 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 effortthe team will be working on these scenarios: 

  1. Improving the experience of reading text notes already present in a PDF. 
  2. 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 

78 Replies

@Elliot Kirk  Love the new feature of Drawing on PDF file. However, I really need the Tables of Content for PDF and now it disappears on the new version. 

@Elliot Kirk 

 

So far read aloud is working great!  I've had no problems at all reading anything from schematics, installation guides and so on.  Love that you can stop and start wherever you want... Great Job Team!

Annotation 2020-05-18 140119.jpg

 

Dennis5mile

Its mentioned "The highlight tool is available in the PDF toolbar in Canary and Dev channels." but I don't see any such tool in the PDF toolbar in my Canary version not even a flag to do so.
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.

@ZZYSonny I support the voice to put more effort in proper text selection. It looks very messy.

 

The ink looks like it does not profit from Windows Inking that was introduced in Windows 10. I see no point in going backwards. You can support it on the Windows devices and for the other you can keep current inking as it seems to not bother anyone using other platforms. In my opinion the software should profit from technologies available on each platform not to reinvent the wheel that will be bad and "universal".

 

I will leave you with simple though, there is no universal tapspigot or faucet which suites all users and all needs.

It would be fantastic if one could access highlighted text and notes from a tab, please look into this @Elliot Kirk 

@Elliot Kirk 

With regard to editing of PDF documents, the inking is not smooth. The inking corrects to ones with sharp, ugly borders rather that picking up the input as it is and therefore make the input extremely unappealing & distorted with numerous pixels. The numerical value of thickness of the pen, which was available on Edge Classic is definitely missed since it helped maintain the consistency of the thickness of the written text.

Scrolling the pages of the document results in scribbles on it due to the touch-input which make it very cumbersome to use Edge as a tool to view & edit documents with ease.

Also, post-update, the previous edits & additions to the text in writing have changed.

And attempting to save the file results in creation of a new file which is definitely a turn off.

Kindly look into this. The classic Edge featured were more favorable and easy to use for the editing of a file with a wide array of easy-to-maneuver options without any interference & with greater smoothness.

Please add Table of contents feature also. @Elliot Kirk 

Hi @Elliot Kirk - We currently store around 150 million documents within SharePoint in PDF format. The annotations are stored separately from the PDF file, as comments are kept in-house. The annotation file format is xfdf. Highlighting and tagging comments to areas of the page are the annotation types we mainly use.  If it were possible to inject annotations to the PDF (via a service request) - and also be able to send a json representation of the annotations to a service for storing - my prayers would be answered. :)

 

Thanks,

Jon

@Elliot Kirk I like this update of Edge very much! I'm a teacher, and I now use Edge to mark my students' papers using the digital pen. I also very much like how it quickly saves the document: no pop-up as if I did a "Save As", not like the other pdf readers. 

 

I'm not really sure if this is covered in this topic, but is it possible to make Microsoft Edge do those things for image files? Some of my students submit image files, and I don't really expect or force them to convert them to pdf. I would really appreciate it if I could edit those files with the same ease like how you did with pdf's. 

Right now I use Snip & Sketch to edit image files, but the pop-up save somewhat consumes time and effort, especially when dealing with a large number of students. It also creates some weird extra space. The Photos app is not really good for drawing in images (cannot zoom, and also the save thing). 

@Elliot Kirk 

Is there a way to change Edge Chromium back to Edge?

...Because Edge was very good for writing in a pdf-file with my Surface book pen. But now, while writing, the drawen text is blurred for a second and then gets sharp. Totally annoying. In addition, you can no longer scroll with your hands, while the drawing mode is activated. Why would I want to draw with my fingers instead of scrolling, while I am using a pen?

Hope there will be a solution soon. All students I know have the same trouble and are now searching for solutions outside of Microsoft.

 

Best regards

Konstantin Albert

Hi @KingKonni,

 

You can sort of re-enable the legacy Edge browser.  Try searching for "running legacy edge and chromium edge side by side" in Bing or Google.

 

I'm keeping the legacy Edge precisely because of its superiority in annotation using a pen over the Chromium Edge.

 

Best regards,

Jude

Thanks!
The problem was that my Windows did not allow me to uninstall the new Edge. But with third party programms it worked. Now I have the "old" perfect Edge back.
Maybe the Chromium will improve so that we can upgrade without any fear :)

Best regards
Konstantin

I absolutely loved some feature of the old edge while reading PDFs:

1) The scroll/change slide feature. (Trying now new edge seems this feature is not available);

2) The feature to group tabs and reopen it, it was faster before than now, I don't really like this new one.

Very good that is chromium based and nice to have extensions.

 

@Elliot Kirk 

Loving the improved Edge, but when I'm drawing on the PDF, my lines are not smooth, and so my words look very untidy. This problem was not there in the previous Edge. It'll be extra great if we could type in texts onto the PDF too. Thank you for your work.

@Elliot Kirk 

since you have forced me to use edge to save and view my pdf documents, and I am now forced to work from home with COVID19, I would appreciate being able to fill in forms and documents and insert my signature as well, as I would be able to do in adobe. when will that become a feature? i am not pleased with this at all.

 


@Sharon_J320 wrote:

@Elliot Kirk 

since you have forced me to use edge to save and view my pdf documents, and I am now forced to work from home with COVID19, I would appreciate being able to fill in forms and documents and insert my signature as well, as I would be able to do in adobe. when will that become a feature? i am not pleased with this at all.


@Sharon_J320 

 

You are not forced into anything.  To change what opens any file, simply go into your windows settings 
click apps

Screenshot 2020-08-17 150852.jpg

Then click default, scroll down to where you see "choose default app by file type"

Screenshot 2020-08-17 150739.jpg

Then scroll down to where pdf is at and make your choice.

Screenshot 2020-08-17 150548.jpg

Ta da your done...  Hope this helps...

 

Dennis5mile

@masquerain0601 

 

Is there a way to revert back to the scrolling text as I have a fillable document in which that function is preferred over shrinking the text that is the default with this version.

Thank you. I am loving these features and I am looking forward to add text notes on PDF

@Elliot Kirk Could the ability to copy and paste snippets of images be used as well?