Are comments in a PDF visible to others?

By Check Before Send · Updated 13 October 2026

Yes, if the comments are still in the file you send. A comment's text, the reviewer's name and the marks around it are stored in the PDF itself. Hiding the comment pane in your viewer does not take them out, and the person who opens the file can usually show them.

This guide explains where a PDF keeps comments, what Apple says about annotated PDFs, and what we found in a test file.

Where a PDF keeps comments

The PDF standard describes comments as annotations. A text annotation is a sticky note attached to a point in the document. When it is closed it shows as an icon, and when it is open it shows a pop-up window with the note's text. The text is stored as part of the annotation, so it is in the file whether or not anyone opens the pop-up.

Highlights, ink marks and similar markup are annotations too. A reviewer's name is stored with them.

What Apple says

Apple's guide to annotating a PDF in Preview says that saving a PDF normally keeps annotations editable. To save it and flatten the annotations so they cannot be edited, the page says to choose Print and then Save as PDF. Flattening is therefore a different way of saving, not something that happens by itself.

We did not test what flattening does to the notes' text, so this guide does not claim that it removes them.

What we tested

We made a small test PDF with invented content: two comments, a highlight and an ink mark by an invented reviewer, with a phone number written inside one of the notes. We ran Check Before Send on it. It listed the comments and markup with the reviewer's name and the note text, and it listed the phone number inside the note as a separate finding.

We let it make a copy and scanned the copy a second time. No findings remained, and the copy had no comments, no reviewer name and no phone number.

This was one small file made for testing. A PDF that someone annotated in a particular app may store comments in additional ways, and we did not test every app.

What to do

Before you send a reviewed PDF, open the comments list and read every note, including the ones in replies.
Look for personal details inside notes, such as phone numbers or names, not only the reviewer's name.
Check the copy you will send, not the working version.

Check the PDF before you send it

Drop the PDF into Check Before Send. It lists the comments and markup with the reviewer name and note text, you choose what to remove, and it writes a new copy and runs a second scan on that copy. "Verified not found" means that second scan found nothing, not that the file is guaranteed clean.

The file is read inside your browser and is not uploaded; the Trust Center explains how to confirm that. For the Word version of this question, see are resolved comments still in a Word document, or browse the other guides.

Sources

More guides

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