Following on from my last post (or rant) about the removal of the checkbox in Adobe Acrobat’s commenting tools, I can report that the December 2018 release of Adobe Acrobat has brought back checkboxes within the commenting tools. However, it does come with some caveats:
It is an “opt-in” preference
Unfortunately, the ability to see checkboxes is off by default. If you are missing the checkboxes and want them back, you have to make sure that you have the following checkbox checked in your preferences:
Checkboxes are only shown when comments are selected
Unlike earlier versions of Acrobat that would show all checkboxes (whether the comment was selected or not) the checkboxes will only appear once a comment is selected.
I find this frustrating as I have to click on the comment to then have access to the checkbox, whereas in previous (admittedly older) versions, the checkboxes always appeared. Kelly Vaughn’s Document Geek site does a fantastic job of showing the different ways comments were handled in previous versions.
However, if all of the comments are selected, then all of the checkboxes become visible.
Problem solved, right? Sadly, no. If any of those checkboxes are clicked, all checkboxes that appear will change state from unchecked to checked.
So while checkboxes can appear in an unchecked state, the UI still has lots of room for improvement when compared to previous versions of Acrobat, or other paid PDF viewers such as Bluebeam Revue. For now, it’s a small win to see the checkboxes return.
The share button can be made smaller
Another UI fixup that was highly requested was the ability to remove the great big share button in the top right. Again, it’s there by default, but you can make it smaller by right clicking next to the button and selecting the Hide Share Button Label option:
So the button won’t go away, but will at least be half the size:
Déjà vu?
Unfortunately, this is the second time in recent years that myself and others had to twist the Acrobat team’s arm to bring back a feature that had been removed (or deprecated), such as the time that key tools from the commenting panel were removed before being reintroduced months later following user complaints.
In this instance, this isn’t the outcome that I (and many other users) were after, but at least it is a step in the right direction. Let’s hope that the next version of Acrobat introduce some of the community’s suggestions about the checkboxes, as well as other pain-points that can be found on the Acrobat Uservoice.
[…] were reintroduced in the December 2018 update of Adobe Acrobat. More information can be found here, but I will keep this article visible for the sake of […]
Wow! Thank you for the update on this, Colin! I would never have noticed that. I love having the checkboxes. But one clarification: when I turn on a checkbox, it stays visible (even after I select another comment). This is all I need. So “no visible checkbox” means the box has not yet been checked. Visible means it has been checked. I’m happy with that!
Good point David! I learned about the checkbox fix a few weeks ago, but Colin, I didn’t know about being able to right-click next to the huge blue Share button and reduce it to an icon! Thank for you that. It appears to be an application preference; even after restarting, it’s still an icon. (But if you have multiple PDFs open, they’ll retain the big button until you right-click on each, or restart the app.) Anyway, I’d say it’s about 20% the size of the button, and much more unobtrusive.