PDF Comments

[venkat.siddareddy]

Dear friends,

I am using the PDF object in my latest project and when the PDF is locaded I can see that the comments functionality is greyed out in AMS Projects. Where as outside of the project I can comment and mark the document.

Thanks and regards
Venkat

[venkat.siddareddy]

Is it possible to enable the Comments functionality within AMS. Please Help

[Ulrich]

I did a little investigation, and from my findings, I would reply that no, commenting in PDF files using the Adobe Reader ActiveX in AutoPlay Media Studio is not possible, because the ActiveX does not allow this feature.

Note that the FAQ on the Adobe states specifically this:

Reader makes it easy to annotate PDF documents. With Reader on your desktop, you can: annotate PDFs using sticky notes; type text directly onto the page; highlight, underline, or use strikethrough tools; and draw on the screen with the freehand drawing tool. The same commenting tools are also available on Adobe Acrobat Reader DC for mobile.

So, the desktop edition explicitly allows this. However, in AutoPlay Media Studio while using the ActiveX control, most features of the Comment toolbar are disabled, as you found out:



You can see the exact same behavior if you load a PDF into Internet Explorer, which would use the same ActiveX to display the content. As you can see, the toolbar is again mostly disabled (just the drawing submenu works):



So, in other words, this does not appear to be a problem in AutoPlay Media Studio (or Internet Explorer), but most likely a limitation of the ActiveX control, which does not offer the full feature set of the desktop application because Adobe decided that it should be this way. If you absolutely want to allow commenting in the PDF, you may need to load the document into the desktop application of Adobe Reader, or perhaps see if a different PDF engine can be used to fit your needs.

I performed these tests using Reader DC, which appears to be the most current release of Adobe Reader.

Ulrich

[venkat.siddareddy]

Thankyou very much for the response. I will try with different PDF engines. But how can I inform AMS that I am using a different PDF Engine? Will it know automatically?

Please let me know.

Thanks in advance

[Ulrich]

You could try to load a different ActiveX control - for example from Foxit - into the ActiveX plugin (not part of AutoPlay Media Studio), or open the PDF with a bundled PDF reader.

Ulrich