Annotation summary shows only some annotations

[humanengr 49]

On Mac and iOS, for documents with many Skitch annotations, the annotation summary presents as a single page that includes only the first ~20 annotations.

Is this a known problem?

[amiocamp 0]

I am also experiencing this and it is very disappointing. I upgraded specifically to use this feature based on the  information on this help page (screencap below) which implies the annotation summary shows all annotations. I cannot imagine a scenario where only seeing some but not all annotations would be useful. @BSR maybe I'm missing something?

If this is indeed the intended behavior, please edit the help page at the very least, it's outright misleading as it is currently written. 

[GoldenToy 13]

After reading this, I understand that this is a deliberate choice by your product team.

That being said, I would really love this to be a complete recap. The summary as it is isn't really useful for me. A complete recap would. 

 

Here's what my typical workflow/use case is:

I read a long PDF (>50 pages, oftentimes in the 200 page rank). I make a lot of annotations in there.

Afterwards, I go through all my annotations again for a more in-depth reading.

 

Why this would make the experience of using evernote annotations for me a lot better:

I realize I could just scroll through the entire book and look for annotations, but having a complete recap in the same format as the truncated summary would be a significant time-saver and a much better experience. It's mentally taxing to scroll through so much content having to look for annotations, and then when coming across an annotation to "switch" into read-this-in-depth mode. Oftentimes these annotations require me to initiate a separate action: research, executing a series of tasks outlined in the PDF, taking notes in separate documents, etc.

On a related note, being able to add bookmarks to the PDF would be great (as would opening annotated PDFs at the place where they were left open, so it saves me the scrolling around to find the place where to continue).

Thanks for considering these suggestions!

[BSR 208]

9 hours ago, humanengr said:

On Mac and iOS, for documents with many Skitch annotations, the annotation summary presents as a single page that includes only the first ~20 annotations.

Is this a known problem?

 

Hi @humanengr,

This is actually the expected behavior. The annotation summary is just that - a summary, rather than a complete recap of all annotations made. This is especially true of large PDFs.

Would you mind telling me what your typical workflow/use cases are with larger PDFs? I'd like to get this information to our developers so they can have a bit more context to address this issue appropriately.

I look forward to your response!

[humanengr 49]

Thanks for responding. 

My workflow is to break large PDFs into several 'chapters' so that, if I need to heavily annotate, the 'summary' is not too lengthy for later browsing, and I can easily access relevant sections using the summary's link feature. But the summaries still often over-extend the current display limit.

I periodically interrupt annotation sessions to 'Save' (to ensure against loss from unexpected events). When I re-enter the PDF, I want to pick up from the point of the last annotation. As it stands, tapping the last displayed summary annotation leaves me a fair number of pages shy of that point.

[BSR 208]

19 hours ago, humanengr said:

Thanks for responding. 

My workflow is to break large PDFs into several 'chapters' so that, if I need to heavily annotate, the 'summary' is not too lengthy for later browsing, and I can easily access relevant sections using the summary's link feature. But the summaries still often over-extend the current display limit.

I periodically interrupt annotation sessions to 'Save' (to ensure against loss from unexpected events). When I re-enter the PDF, I want to pick up from the point of the last annotation. As it stands, tapping the last displayed summary annotation leaves me a fair number of pages shy of that point.

Hi @humanengr, thanks for getting back to me. I will forward this to our Tech Support team. If I receive any additional information on this I'll be sure to update this thread. Thanks again!

[shallon 0]

I am on Windows, but I too would very much appreciate this feature. I used to do that with the Adobe comment features and it really helps having all your annotations in once place to scan through rather than spending time scrolling through a long PDF document.

[Chad3919 0]

@BSR Thanks for your email and explanation of the reasoning behind not showing all the annotations.  My workflow was requested from a representative and this is what I sent.  

It’s my responsibility to digest 200 page reports. Contained with in these reports is distinct portions of information that partners with expertise in particular areas need to review. It is difficult to get these individuals to review whole documents to see the annotated portions. For that reason I thought that the annotation summary would allow them to see the relevant sections without having to review the whole document.

It seems to me that the length of a “summary” is relative to the size of the document and should therefore be up to the user to dictate how much information should be included. At this point my annotation summary only contains 7 of the 49 annotations. 

Is there a work around where I can show all of my annotations?

Please let me know if this provides you with the information you need.

Thank you,

Chad

[Dmitry Kholodilov 0]

Hi! I've been surprised today after reviewing long article that annotation summary only includes half of my highlights. Please, add option for including full recap of highlight in summary. Also see this thread with the same question:

 

[ASD19 0]

Is this problem resolved yet?

[prvb13 0]

I have this problem as well. Need to read through long PDF's and use annotate function to summarize important parts and reference them at later dates. Any update on a fix for this?

[GoldenToy 13]

This is still an item high on my Evernote wish list, wish the product team would prioritize this.

[Rutger Quak 0]

This is also high on my wish list! I find the annotation summary feature in this way actually useless. It would be a great functionality if it shows all annotations, so that you immediately see all relevant sections of the document together in the summary.

Thanks for considering to include this feature!

[prvb13 0]

I've started using screenshots and paste into evernote. Not ideal. but a decent workaround

[larrybobo 0]

Evernote should definitely have a complete recap of the PDF annotations! I don't see any technical difficulty in doing so. Right now my way of having a complete recap is to use the "annotated only" function at the lower right in annotation mode. You can manually select one by one all the annotated pages but you cannot even scroll down with your mouse or keyboard. Scrolling down is only for the whole document. Besides, there's no way either to print them or to export them to a single document. 

Edited August 10, 2017 by larrybobo
additional info added

[AlexKuc 3]

Now is October and the issue is still present...

[jmojoking 0]

I would love for this issue to solved and to be able to view all annotations

[humanengr 49]

To anyone who likes this suggestion (to show all annotations for a pdf), pls tap the ‘up arrow’ at the top left of this page by my OP.

Evernote implemented a non-obvious voting mechanism that generally goes unnoticed. (And it’s not that the votes mean much, but it does show support.)

thx

[Aravind Ajith 0]

@BSR @EverNote Is there any update regarding this?

(Ticket number for this chat is 2305617)

[limamedeiros 0]

It would be nice if this behavior was more explicit. I almost upgraded my subscription for this feature (annotation) but it's kind of useless for me if it only displays the first 20 annotations. 

[humanengr 49]

22 hours ago, limamedeiros said:

It would be nice if this behavior was more explicit. I almost upgraded my subscription for this feature (annotation) but it's kind of useless for me if it only displays the first 20 annotations. 

To promote this suggestion, tap the up arrow at the top to the left of “Annotation Summary …”.

[limamedeiros 0]

On 12/23/2017 at 7:40 PM, humanengr said:

To promote this suggestion, tap the up arrow at the top to the left of “Annotation Summary …”.

I did that before posting my comment. I just wish that more people had done the same. 

[humanengr 49]

3 hours ago, limamedeiros said:

I did that before posting my comment. I just wish that more people had done the same. 

I pm’d everybody above a couple of weeks ago and 1 added a vote (after some difficulty). Ever since that voting mechanism was instituted, I’ve written in repeatedly about its invisibility, awkwardness, general poor implementation, etc., etc., and the fact that people aren’t using it because they don’t notice it, but the damn thing hasn’t changed.

Maybe if you create a ticket on your own for that??

[Sergio D. López 0]

Same problem here... 

[Nicole Lai 0]

I really hope I can be able to see all my annotation in the summary... I am a research student that deal with lots of readings, and the summary can help me to mark down what is important in this reading, and it can facilitate my thesis writing...

[Loretta O. 0]

I also ran into this issue, searched for it and found this thread.  I too see no reason why there would not be an option to see all the annotations.  This is a bug, in my opinion.

[Jack2018 0]

I also have this issue. My use case is to read a pdf document and do annotations.

After I finished the document study I would like to only work with the "complete" annotation summary.

If not all the annotations are shown in the summary the whole annotation process is useless.

I hope there will be a feature request soon...

[USSBlanketship 0]

I agree with @amiocamp about the product page for PDF annotation being misleading if this is how the annotation summary feature still works. I just upgrade from Plus to Premium last night and the summary was a key selling point for me! As others have described, I want to go through large files on my iPad, annotate with the pencil, and then review the content by using the summary from whichever device I am on. How would a partial summary be useful? Why wouldn't you be forthcoming with this limit in the product information instead of claiming that "each annotation" appears in the summary? What is the actual limit? Why is this still an issue 2 years later from the original post? @BSR can you follow up on this and let us know if they are going to make this feature usable? I need to know or else I'm going to ask to downgrade back to Plus because I can't use the annotations the way I expected based on the lies in the product description. 

[wanageeska 3]

I’m running into this same issue. I use (or at least planned to use) the annotation summary like a hyperlinked ‘table of contents’ for the main points I’ve highlighted in longer documents. In its current form, it’s not of much use.

By definition, a summary is a comprehensive compendium or recapitulation. If the annotation summary doesnt summarise all of the annotations it supposedly relates to, then it doesn’t fit the definition of an annotation summary.

Please seriously consider updating this behaviour Evernote. It would save users a of unneeded scrolling and, therefore, a LOT of time.

Keep up the great work.

[adigi157 0]

Agreed. Please update this, Evernote. GoldenToy's suggestion of having a total recap note that autofills as you annotate would be awesome.

[J Guzman 0]

I would like a full annotation recap. I have large pdf files that I annotate and searching through them for the annotations is cumbersome and time consuming.

[wolfram 1]

I just found this thread after running into the bug that the annotation summary is incomplete. To my understanding this is not yet fixed. So let me add my use case and the actual behaviors I expect.

Steps to reproduce: Review a document with 500 pages and highlight and/or mark the things I found interesting and/or important. Altogether these are 166 places.

Expected behavior: See all places with annotations, allowing me to find the 166 highlights and annotations quickly (i.e., find the "important stuff for me"). Furthermore, I can "search" in my highlighted text and find specific phrases.

Actual behavior: Every time I am looking for something I have to browse all 500 pages and may or may not find what I have been looking for.

Without being able FIND the places I have highlighted I could as well print it out and use a marker -- when only keeping the highlighted pages this would be superior to the current Evernote implementation!

[Pratik Kothari 0]

Is this solved yet, please?

[Prashant468 0]

Kindly resolve it. I too need all the annotation summary at one place.

[Kohlmy 0]

Hi Evernote Team

Run into same problem... I would like to choose if I need a short recap or the full list of all my annotations.

When is this solved?

Thanks

[Kohlmy 0]

On 11/19/2019 at 9:45 PM, Kohlmy said:

Hi Evernote Team

Run into same problem... I would like to choose if I need a short recap or the full list of all my annotations.

When is this solved?

Thanks

Hi Evernote

This was raised 2016. I asked in November last year and there is no statement from you guys by when this basic function is ready to use.

Why do I pay if you do not fix such simple things?

Looking forward to your reply

Thomas

[DTLow 5,721]

5 minutes ago, Kohlmy said:

Looking forward to your reply

You're posting in a user discussion forum; we rarely get replies from Evernote

You're welcome to indicate your support for this request using the vote button at the upper left corner of the discussion   
This request currently has 19 votes

[Dziln 0]

Same issue (Sept 2020). Capping the annotation summary severely impedes my workflow.