Storing information in PDF documents always come in handy when you do not want the viewer to be able to simply copy’paste your text/material/information from your document to somewhere else. Furthermore, PDF documents also offer a smaller size for most files for instance an image, if converted to a PDF document, will almost always be compressed in size.
I have been creating and working with PDF documents for a long time now and the data I have been able to incorporate within my PDF’s was text and images. Today we explore an extremely useful freeware, PDF Annot, which lets the user enter audio and text annotations to an existing PDF file.
The setup file to be downloaded is ~8 MB large and is required for installation. Installation takes place in a standard manner and everything is clear. One downloaded, your desktop will have an icon named PDF Annot.
Use PDF Annot to open any PDF file. To take PDF Annot out on a test drive, I made a simple PDF file that had the text “Checking out PDF Annot” contained.
To add audio/text annotations to your PDF files, double click on the PDF Annot icon and when the program opens, go to File -> Open a PDF, and browse over to the folder where the PDF file is. In my case, here is how adding the PDF file to PDF Annot looked like:
The left panel shows the number of pages in the PDF and the section on the right shows us the PDF. To add annotations, in the main menu click on ‘PDFViewerAnnotMenu.text.’
Choosing the audio option first:
Once you have the option the selected, click on the PDF where you want the annotation to be. A box will pop up like so:
The first field is the where the user enters the title of the audio annotation. The next field lets you add a short description. Both fields are optional, and you can proceed to record the audio and add it whether or not the annotation has a name or description. To record, click on the left most button; to stop, click on the right most button; to hear back what you just recorded, click on the middle button.
For adding text annotations, repeat the process by choosing text instead of audio in the drop down menu. The box that appears has only the tile and description fields:
Once you are done, save the document and open it with any PDF viewer. I use Foxit Reader and here is how the result looked like:
The yellow marker is for the text annotation and the red play button is for audio. You can click on either one and have your annotation displayed/played.
While viewing annotations, your PDF viewer should support them. If you are using the official Adobe Acrobat Reader, you should be just fine. Other popular PDF viewers like Foxit, do the job just as well. However in case your PDF viewer does not support annotation, either text or audio or both, simply keep a copy of the official Acrobat Reader installed on your system.
PDF Annot makes adding audio/text annotations to PDF’s all the more simpler, making life easier for everyone working with PDF files.
