pdfpages removes handwritten notes

Question

i'm trying to insert a rather large, handwrittenly annotated pdf. It was created using Drawboard PDF. pdfpages inserts the pages fine, but removes all annotations from every page, leaving them empty. This is what a page originally looks like (viewed using any pdf viewer, including the overleaf preview):

But after inserting it with \includepdf, all the pages look like this:

Does anyone know what's causing this problem to occur? Any possible fixes?

I'm adding it the following way:

\includepdf[pages=-]{docs/test.pdf}

And i'm using the following packages, if it's of any importance:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{pdfpages}

@book it saves everything as pdf by default. I tried using the save as function (which removes internal data and such), with no success. I also tried to print it in chrome using "save as pdf", which didn't help either... — Chester, Dec 05 '18 at 17:12

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 05 '18 at 17:15

5

I solved it using the print function in Drawboard PDF and then using "Microsoft print to PDF". Printing to PDF from Chrome did not do the trick.

answered Dec 05 '18 at 17:15

Chester

211

This bears no relation to TeX and friends... – Dec 05 '18 at 18:36

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 06 '18 at 14:00

4

Your handwritten annotations are probably stored in the PDF file as a PDF annotation, and pdfpages is not able to include annotations. "Flattening" the annotations into the PDF file, as you have done by printing to PDF, is one possibility to resolve this problem. Another is to use the pax package, which allows you to extract annotations using a helper application then reinclude them from LaTeX.

answered Dec 06 '18 at 14:00

Eric Marsden

1,233

The pax package seems outdated :( – robertspierre Oct 12 '21 at 19:16
Also the pdfannotextractor does not know of annotations of type 'Ink', which at least in my case leads to not extracting the handwritten notes. – Jaleks Aug 11 '22 at 12:16
If you are using luatex, you could try the newpax package, which extracts the annotations using some Lua code then reinserts them in the final PDF file. – Eric Marsden Aug 17 '22 at 09:31

pdfpages removes handwritten notes

2 Answers2