Delete a PDF's comments and markup

How to Remove PDF Annotations

1. Add the PDF. Drop the file in. It is scanned on your device and the categories of annotation it actually contains are listed, with counts.
2. Choose what to remove. Comments, highlights and drawings are ticked by default. Links and form fields are not, since removing those changes what the document does.
3. Remove and download. Save the cleaned PDF. The result says how many annotations came off and from how many pages.

Removing is not flattening

These two get confused constantly and do close to opposite things, which is worth getting straight before choosing either.

Flattening keeps what an annotation looks like. It paints the annotation into the page content and discards only the interactivity: the highlight stays yellow, the sticky-note icon stays where it was, the filled-in form field keeps its answer — they simply stop being editable.

Removing deletes the annotation object outright. The highlight is gone, the note is gone, and the text underneath appears exactly as it did before anyone marked it up.

Which one you want depends entirely on why you are asking. “Stop the other side editing this signed form” is flattening. “Send this contract without our internal comments all over it” is removal — and doing that by flattening would ship the comments permanently baked into the pages.

The comment you cannot see is the one that matters

A PDF annotation is a separate object attached to a page, and much of what it holds is not visible on screen. Every comment carries an author name. Most carry a creation and modification timestamp. Replies form threads with their own authorship. A resolved or collapsed comment is still in the file, and a popup that was never opened is still in the file.

So a document that looks clean because the comments pane is closed can still be carrying the name of everyone who reviewed it, when they did so, and what they said — all of it readable by anyone who opens the file with a different reader, or with a text editor.

That is the actual risk in sending out a document that has been through internal review, and it is why the counts are shown before anything is removed. If the file says it holds forty-one comments and you expected none, that is worth knowing before it leaves.

What each category does

Comments and notes covers sticky notes, callouts and their popup windows — the review apparatus, and the category most likely to carry names and dates.

Highlights and text markup covers highlighting, underlines and strikethrough. These sit over the text without altering it, so removing them restores the clean page.

Drawings and stamps covers freehand ink, shapes, arrows and approval stamps. Note that a signature drawn as ink markup lives here, so leave this unticked if the signature is meant to stay.

Links removes the clickable areas while leaving the visible text exactly as it is — the blue underlined text stays blue and underlined, it simply stops going anywhere.

Form fields is offered but unticked, because it deletes the interactive form and everything typed into it. If you want to keep the answers but stop them being changed, Flatten PDF is the tool.

When markup will not come off

If the tool reports no annotations but you can plainly see highlighting on the page, the markup has already been flattened into the page content by whatever produced the file. At that point it is not an annotation any more — it is part of the artwork, indistinguishable from a coloured box someone drew deliberately.

Nothing can remove it without also removing what is underneath. Redact PDF will cover it, permanently, which is the honest remaining option.

The same is true of a scanned document that was marked up on paper before scanning. The pen strokes are pixels in an image, not objects in the file.

Frequently asked questions