Apr 13 2020 11:05 AM - last edited on Nov 09 2023 11:10 AM by
The integrated PDF reader in the legacy Microsoft Edge browser is deeply loved by many of you and we have been getting feedback about the availability of those features in the new version of Microsoft Edge. We are working on adding your favorite annotations tools to the PDF reader in Microsoft Edge right now and wanted to provide you an update on our work.
Inking on PDF files
Today you can use built-in inking tools when you open PDF files in the new Microsoft Edge. This allows you to take notes, fill out and sign PDF forms. Click on the Draw button from the toolbar to start writing; you can use a digital pen, touch or a mouse. You can use the Erase button to start erasing the strokes. If you are using a digital pen with a back-button, you can use that to erase while in draw mode.
We have also added the ability to change the color and width of the lines you are drawing. To open the new customization panel, just click or tap the "“ button attached to the Draw tool. This new color and stroke width selector are already available in the Canary and Dev channels and will make their way to the Stable channel in Microsoft Edge version 83.
Text highlight support
Highlighting important text while reading PDFs is a very common activity especially for students reading books or research papers in PDF format. We have added the ability to highlight text in PDF files. You can access this feature today in the Canary, Dev and Beta channels via the context menu. Just select any piece of text on a PDF document that you want to highlight, right click to invoke the context menu and you will find the option to highlight the text. You can even choose from four different colors for the highlighters.
We will continue to improve the highlighting experience in PDF by making it accessible directly from the PDF toolbar. Click or tap Highlight in the toolbar to get started. Then use your digital pen or mouse over the text you want to highlight. You can also change the color of the highlight by clicking the "“ button attached to the Highlight tool. This will open a color panel where you can select the color of your choice. The highlight tool is available in the PDF toolbar in Canary and Dev channels. You can expect to see it roll out to more channels in upcoming releases.
What’s next
We know that many of you love the PDF reader in Microsoft Edge and we’ve heard a lot of feedback and requests for annotations support. We will be working on improving the ability to do light editing on PDF files which would make you productive right within the browser. As part of this effort, the team will be working on these scenarios:
Let us know in what scenarios you use annotations on PDFs and what kind of toolset you would want to see in Microsoft Edge PDF reader. This would help us expand the range of tools we have for PDFs with what is most important for you.
May 18 2020 07:48 AM
@Elliot Kirk Love the new feature of Drawing on PDF file. However, I really need the Tables of Content for PDF and now it disappears on the new version.
May 18 2020 11:14 AM
So far read aloud is working great! I've had no problems at all reading anything from schematics, installation guides and so on. Love that you can stop and start wherever you want... Great Job Team!
Dennis5mile
May 21 2020 11:02 PM
May 21 2020 11:06 PM
May 28 2020 01:19 PM
@ZZYSonny I support the voice to put more effort in proper text selection. It looks very messy.
The ink looks like it does not profit from Windows Inking that was introduced in Windows 10. I see no point in going backwards. You can support it on the Windows devices and for the other you can keep current inking as it seems to not bother anyone using other platforms. In my opinion the software should profit from technologies available on each platform not to reinvent the wheel that will be bad and "universal".
I will leave you with simple though, there is no universal tap, spigot or faucet which suites all users and all needs.
Jun 11 2020 11:23 AM
It would be fantastic if one could access highlighted text and notes from a tab, please look into this @Elliot Kirk
Jun 24 2020 07:15 AM
With regard to editing of PDF documents, the inking is not smooth. The inking corrects to ones with sharp, ugly borders rather that picking up the input as it is and therefore make the input extremely unappealing & distorted with numerous pixels. The numerical value of thickness of the pen, which was available on Edge Classic is definitely missed since it helped maintain the consistency of the thickness of the written text.
Scrolling the pages of the document results in scribbles on it due to the touch-input which make it very cumbersome to use Edge as a tool to view & edit documents with ease.
Also, post-update, the previous edits & additions to the text in writing have changed.
And attempting to save the file results in creation of a new file which is definitely a turn off.
Kindly look into this. The classic Edge featured were more favorable and easy to use for the editing of a file with a wide array of easy-to-maneuver options without any interference & with greater smoothness.
Jul 02 2020 05:34 PM
Please add Table of contents feature also. @Elliot Kirk
Jul 05 2020 06:44 AM
Hi @Elliot Kirk - We currently store around 150 million documents within SharePoint in PDF format. The annotations are stored separately from the PDF file, as comments are kept in-house. The annotation file format is xfdf. Highlighting and tagging comments to areas of the page are the annotation types we mainly use. If it were possible to inject annotations to the PDF (via a service request) - and also be able to send a json representation of the annotations to a service for storing - my prayers would be answered. 🙂
Thanks,
Jon
Jul 18 2020 12:04 AM
@Elliot Kirk I like this update of Edge very much! I'm a teacher, and I now use Edge to mark my students' papers using the digital pen. I also very much like how it quickly saves the document: no pop-up as if I did a "Save As", not like the other pdf readers.
I'm not really sure if this is covered in this topic, but is it possible to make Microsoft Edge do those things for image files? Some of my students submit image files, and I don't really expect or force them to convert them to pdf. I would really appreciate it if I could edit those files with the same ease like how you did with pdf's.
Right now I use Snip & Sketch to edit image files, but the pop-up save somewhat consumes time and effort, especially when dealing with a large number of students. It also creates some weird extra space. The Photos app is not really good for drawing in images (cannot zoom, and also the save thing).
Jul 18 2020 07:28 AM
Is there a way to change Edge Chromium back to Edge?
...Because Edge was very good for writing in a pdf-file with my Surface book pen. But now, while writing, the drawen text is blurred for a second and then gets sharp. Totally annoying. In addition, you can no longer scroll with your hands, while the drawing mode is activated. Why would I want to draw with my fingers instead of scrolling, while I am using a pen?
Hope there will be a solution soon. All students I know have the same trouble and are now searching for solutions outside of Microsoft.
Best regards
Konstantin Albert
Jul 18 2020 07:56 AM - edited Jul 18 2020 08:10 AM
Hi @KingKonni,
You can sort of re-enable the legacy Edge browser. Try searching for "running legacy edge and chromium edge side by side" in Bing or Google.
I'm keeping the legacy Edge precisely because of its superiority in annotation using a pen over the Chromium Edge.
Best regards,
Jude
Jul 18 2020 08:33 AM
Aug 03 2020 07:43 AM
I absolutely loved some feature of the old edge while reading PDFs:
1) The scroll/change slide feature. (Trying now new edge seems this feature is not available);
2) The feature to group tabs and reopen it, it was faster before than now, I don't really like this new one.
Very good that is chromium based and nice to have extensions.
Aug 09 2020 10:41 PM
Aug 17 2020 11:59 AM
since you have forced me to use edge to save and view my pdf documents, and I am now forced to work from home with COVID19, I would appreciate being able to fill in forms and documents and insert my signature as well, as I would be able to do in adobe. when will that become a feature? i am not pleased with this at all.
Aug 17 2020 12:14 PM - edited Aug 17 2020 12:15 PM
@Sharon_J320 wrote:since you have forced me to use edge to save and view my pdf documents, and I am now forced to work from home with COVID19, I would appreciate being able to fill in forms and documents and insert my signature as well, as I would be able to do in adobe. when will that become a feature? i am not pleased with this at all.
You are not forced into anything. To change what opens any file, simply go into your windows settings
click apps
Then click default, scroll down to where you see "choose default app by file type"
Then scroll down to where pdf is at and make your choice.
Ta da your done... Hope this helps...
Dennis5mile
Sep 12 2020 03:49 PM
Is there a way to revert back to the scrolling text as I have a fillable document in which that function is preferred over shrinking the text that is the default with this version.
Sep 13 2020 07:14 PM
Nov 16 2020 10:04 AM
@Elliot Kirk Could the ability to copy and paste snippets of images be used as well?