Annotate PDF Files For Free

Did you know that you can annotate pdf files for free? This post will detail the method I use to annotate pdf files. In order to do this you’ll need the following two applications:

• Foxit Reader
• PDFCreator

Foxit Reader is a simple pdf reader application. This application also allows you to add notes, arrows, highlighting, and many other additions to your pdf document.

Although the reader can be downloaded for free, the notes and things that you can add are actually part of the paid version of the software. If you save your document after annotating it the software will add a watermark to the corner of the document. Here’s an example of the watermark:

It is possible to save a copy of your annotations using the other free application, PDFCreator. From the PDFCreator website:

PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.

This application will add an additional printer that will be available from your print dialog. Basically you can print from any Windows application to the PDF Creator printer and it will create a pdf of the document or image or whatever you are printing.

By now I’m sure you can see what the next step would be to save an annotated pdf document. After placing your notes on your document, select File > Print from Foxit and select PDFCreator from the available printers. This will allow you to create a new pdf file. You can write over the old file, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There is one caveat to using this technique, you lose the ability to search the document from whatever pdf reader that you are using.

One great way that I have used this technique several times is for filling out pdf forms. You generally don’t need to search a form document for text. I also have used this method to add notes to lectures that were given out by my professors.

Hope this helps you out sometime!