Remove Comments, Highlights and Annotations from a PDF
Strip sticky notes, highlights, pen marks and stamps from a PDF in one go
Your files stay with you. Conversion happens inside the browser; no file is ever uploaded to a server.
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How it works
The usual case: colleagues marked up a contract draft in Acrobat or on a tablet, with yellow highlights and notes such as "push back on this", and the final version going to the other side must not show that internal discussion. Tap or click the box, choose the PDF and press Remove annotations. The tool finds each comment on every page and removes it; the result line reads, for example, "23 annotations removed: 14 highlights, 6 notes, 3 drawings · kept: 4 links". The text of each sticky note and the name of whoever wrote it leave the file too; they are not merely hidden. The document's own text, images and fillable form fields stay as they are. Highlights that were burned into the page, by flattening or by scanning a marked-up print, are part of the page and cannot be removed this way.
This tool is also known as remove annotations from pdf, delete comments from pdf, remove highlights from pdf, remove sticky notes pdf, clear pdf markup.
What is PDF annotation?
In a PDF, a highlight, sticky note, pen stroke or stamp does not change the page text; it sits on top of the page as a separate object. The PDF standard calls these annotations, and viewers usually call them comments or markup. Each one records its type, position and color, and often the author and date. Because they are separate objects, they can be removed one by one without touching the page content.
What is Form field (widget)?
The boxes, check boxes and drop-down lists in a fillable PDF form technically live in the same annotation layer; they are called widgets. This tool deliberately never removes them, because removing a field would also remove the name, date or amount typed into it. To lock a filled form instead, use the flatten PDF tool.
What is the difference between removing annotations and flattening a PDF?
Removing takes the comments out of the document completely: the highlight, the note and the drawing are no longer anywhere. Flattening does the opposite; it burns comments and form fields into the permanent image of the page, so the highlight stays visible but can no longer be selected or deleted. Remove annotations when you want to send a clean copy, and flatten when you want your markings to stay and not be changed.
What is removed and what stays?
Removed: yellow or colored highlights, underline and strikeout marks, sticky notes and their pop-up boxes, text-box comments, ink and freehand drawings, shapes such as rectangles, circles, arrows and lines, stamps like "Approved" or "Draft", and files attached to comments.
Kept: the page's own text and images, fillable form fields and the answers in them, and, unless you pick "Everything including links", clickable web and table-of-contents links.
- Highlight, underline, strikeout: removed
- Sticky note and text-box comment: removed
- Ink, shapes, stamps: removed
- Form fields: always kept
- Links: your choice
If a highlight is still visible after removal
In some files the highlight is not an annotation but part of the page image. That happens in two cases: the document was flattened after it was highlighted, or it was printed and scanned back in. The yellow is then just a colored rectangle painted behind the text and is not in the annotation layer.
If the result line says no comments or highlights were found, this is why. The reliable way to get rid of such a mark is to find the unmarked original; if you only need to hide personal information, the PDF redaction tool removes that area for good.
Frequently asked questions
How do I delete all comments from a PDF at once?
Choose the PDF on this page and press Remove annotations. Highlights, notes, drawings and stamps on every page are removed together, and the clean file goes to your Downloads folder.
Is the comment author's name removed too?
Yes. A sticky note's text, author name and date are stored in the annotation itself; since the annotation is taken out of the file entirely, that information goes with it. To also clear the document's overall author and title, run the remove PDF metadata tool afterwards.
Will my filled-in form break?
No. Form fields and the answers typed into them are deliberately kept. The result line also shows how many form fields were kept.
Is my document sent to a server?
No. Finding and removing the annotations happens inside your browser; the PDF never leaves this page.