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PDF Annotator SUCKS


apoorvhimself

Idea

While I have been a paid member for over two years, I AM GOING TO CANCEL SUBSCRIPTION NOW due to the fact that many of your features are outdated and still pretty terrible to use. The feature that triggered this outrage is the PDF Annotation feature which is literally the worst I have seen in any application.

Using an iPad to read/annotate a PDF is a nightmare. After hours of annotating the app crashes, nothing is autosaved. When I "Save" my changes, it exits out of annotation mode to the first page of the pdf. Not to forget that the inbuilt PDF reader is extremely unresponsive and easily gets unresponsive/crashes while literally just moving through the pages. 

Issues with PDF Annotation:
1. It is an excruciatingly painful experience using Evernote to read/annotate any PDFs.
2. Terrible UI - No bookmarks or previous location in the PDF saved.
3. Extremely terrible UX
4. Unresponsive app while browsing through PDFs

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On 3/19/2019 at 10:38 AM, apoorvhimself said:

PDF Annotation feature which is literally the worst I have seen in any application.

100% Agree.

1. No ability to search the text of a pdf when inside the annotator

2. No ability to highlight pdf text inside the annotator. A generic highlighter exists, but it doesn't track along the text line

- This requires the work-around, of Open Evernote / Find PDF / Download PDF / Opening PDF is default software (Mac PDF preview or Adobe) / Highlight text in PDF / Re-Save PDF / Re-Uploading PDF to Evernote / Delete previous version of PDF / move on

- The workflow should be: Open Evernote / Find PDF / Highlight PDF text / move on

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Please don't cross post.  I removed your duplicate entries.

I'm not a user of Evernote's annotation feature.  

On my Mac, I use the Preview app.

On my iPad, I use the Notability app.

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My experience:

- For a quick markup while reading, the EN solution is quite o.k. The preview of annotated content on top of the note is very unique, I have not yet found this feature somewhere else.

- If I want to add more content by A-pencil, I use Goodnotes. The handling of pdf-files in GN is very nicely done !

- If I go into real editing a pdf, I open PDF expert. With the in-app-package, one can even edit the original PDFs content, like if it was a word doc.

Generally before waiting for an app to convert itself into a miracle machine that does exactly what I want (and maybe nobody else, which makes it a bad business case), I prefer to work with a small selection of apps that do the specific job on hand as wanted. Yes, if EN would integrate a better pdf editor, it might replace some other app.

My focus would rather be to improve what EN could do better, and no other app will do instead. For example better note handling in iOS, like merging, multi-tagging of a group of notes, showing nested tag structures etc.

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While there is no need for shouting...

I do agree that lack good annotation is a major failing of Evernote.  Not only is it extremely limited functionally, but the functionality that it has is very poorly implemented. For example, when I try using Apple Pencil to write on a document it fails to accurately capture my pencil strokes. Evernote clearly understands the need for annotation. But how is it possible that having been around for as long as it has, with the user base that it enjoys, that its annotation capability is so unforgivably horrible???

I started using Evernote some years ago, but largely stopped. The reason? Every time that I clip an article, my next step is going to be reading that article with Apple Pencil in hand. I highlight, edit, make notes in the margins, etc. etc. When I discovered Notability, my workflow turned into:

Save PDF to Notability --> Interact with the PDF using Notability --> Just live with the very limited organizational capabilities

Why don't I just pull that file back into Evernote? As noted in the previous comment, the workflow for using an external app like Notability is so cumbersome as to be all but useless in a practical sense. Not only do you have to do handstands to annotate a file at all, but when you bring the file back into Evernote it is a new file to which the annotations are forever cast in stone.

I am returning to the question because I am in the process of revising my workflow. Unsurprisingly I am finding that it would be very convenient to use Evernote as a central repository to clip to, use to capture ideas, organize research and the like. I WANT to make Evernote the hub of my digital content, but it remains to be seen whether I throw Evernote overboard again.  

Given the existence of good annotation apps out there, surely it can't be that difficult to lay your hands on an annotation interface from this century!  

Again, I'm not going to shout or get abusive about it, but come on, folks. This need is beyond obvious. Please.

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On 4/11/2019 at 6:45 PM, ux_designer said:

100% Agree.

1. No ability to search the text of a pdf when inside the annotator

2. No ability to highlight pdf text inside the annotator. A generic highlighter exists, but it doesn't track along the text line

- This requires the work-around, of Open Evernote / Find PDF / Download PDF / Opening PDF is default software (Mac PDF preview or Adobe) / Highlight text in PDF / Re-Save PDF / Re-Uploading PDF to Evernote / Delete previous version of PDF / move on

- The workflow should be: Open Evernote / Find PDF / Highlight PDF text / move on

Exactly the same issues I am having with annotation for pdfs in Evernote. I hope that the developers are taking note of this suggestion.

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EN promises a tool to annotate a pdf, and this it does.

PDF Expert (if you use the full version) is a pdf editor, that allows to change a pdf rather than just annotate it. You can always open a pdf from EN in PDF Expert (via Share, or the files app) and use it to modify it. Or use the pdf annotation build into EN itself.

If you look at the full feature & function list of PDF Expert, it makes IMHO no sense at all to integrate this into EN. It would destroy the note taking focus of EN, converting it into a fat, ugly tool that does nothing well, and too much of all.

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