4 Free and Easy Methods to Add Comments to a PDF [Online or Offline]

When you are reading a document or browsing work materials, adding comments will greatly improve your concentration and reading efficiency. We can share our opinions with highlighting, underlining, text notes, sticky notes, text replacement, and other annotation methods.

On this page, you’ll learn about the free and easy methods used to comment and markup PDFs.

Method 1. How to Add Comments to a PDF Online with PDFgear

The PDF file format is not very editable. However, PDFgear makes this operation possible. PDFgear is a web-based PDF editor tool that allows you to do various things in one place, and it’s completely free to use.

To facilitate business collaborations, other practical markup features like highlighting PDFs, inserting signatures into PDFs, adding notes to PDFs, etc. are also supported.

PDFgear is completely free and safe. It has no registration (without asking for emails), no premium version, and no watermark. Now try PDFgear right away!

Step 1. Upload the PDF Document

To add comments to a PDF, navigate to PDFgear PDF editor.

Step 2. Add Comments to the PDF

After you’ve imported the PDF file, go to the right side of the screen and select the “Add Comment” icon. To add a comment, click anywhere in the document.

Once the comment icon appears in your document, you can double-click it to add text on the right panel. After entering the text, click the Post button to finish adding.

Step 3. Markup PDF

As mentioned, there are also markup features offered by the PDFgear Online PDF Editor, go to Add and Edit Annotations in the upper menubar and you’ll find the options for highlighting PDF, inserting text boxes, underlining text, inserting signatures, etc.

Step 4. Download the PDF Document with Comments

Move sight to the upper right corner to find the “Download” button, and click the “Download” button in the upper right corner to save it to your device.

Method 2. How to Add Comments to a PDF Offline with PDFgear Desktop

If you like the PDF annotating features that PDFgear.com has to offer, you definitely should not miss out on the PDF commenter software PDFgear Desktop. PDFgear is one of the best free PDF editors that can be used to add comments to PDFs with complete functions and convenience.

As an offline solution to commenting and annotating PDF documents, PDFgear Desktop is the software version of the PDFgear website and one of the best free PDF annotators, it allows you to add comments of different fonts and colors to your PDF documents without an internet connection.

Now learn from the steps below to add comments to PDF offline on a Mac or Windows PC using PDFgear Desktop. To get started, hit the download button to get PDFgear Desktop.

Step 1. Launch PDFgear Desktop on your Windows 10, Windows 11, or Mac computer.

Step 2. Hit the red Open File button above to add a PDF document that you intend to comment into PDFgear Desktop.

Step 3. Hit the Annotate button from the menubar above, and hit the Note button underneath.

Step 4. From the PDF previewing screen below, click on anywhere you want to insert a comment, and the comment box will be automatically generated.

Step 5. Input your comments into the note box which you can find by the side of the PDF preview screen.

Method 3. How to Add Comments to a PDF Offline with Adobe Acrobat

Want to know how to add comments on Adobe Acrobat? Adobe Acrobat is a popular PDF reader program for PC. It allows us to edit, change, delete, reorder, and rotate PDF pages directly in PDF files.

Aside from PDF commenting, Adobe Acrobat has many other pro-level PDF features like converting HTML to PDF, but it’s a pricy product for sure.

Step 1. Open Adobe Acrobat Software Program

Download and install the Adobe Acrobat computer program to start Adobe Acrobat.

Step 2. Import the PDF Document

Click “My Computer”-“Browse”, and select the PDF document to be uploaded to add and import.

Step 3. Add Comments to the PDF

Touch “Comment” on the right to make the comment ribbon appear. You can add and edit any comments to the entire PDF.

Step 4. Save the Modified PDF Document

You can download and save the commented document by the following steps: File > Save/Save as > Choose a different folder > Save.

Method 4. How to Insert Comments to a PDF Online in Google Drive

Google Drive is a popular online file storage service and you can use it to add comments to PDFs as well. Users can share files or folders with anyone, and choose whether the shared object can view, edit, or comment on the files. Every Google account provides 15GB of free storage space in Google Drive. Start taking advantage of this cloud storage by uploading files and folders from your desktop or mobile device.

Step 1. Enter Google Drive

Log in to the website with your Google account.

Step 2. Open the PDF

Select “New” > “File Upload” on the right to add PDF documents, and you can press “Ctrl” to select multiple files to import. After uploading, you will be notified in the lower right corner.

Step 3. Add Comments to the PDF

A “+” sign at the top right is the button to add comments. After clicking, you can add comments to the PDF document at will.

Step 4. Download the PDF

Click the download button to get the PDF document with comments. That’s all about how to add comments to pdf in google drive.

How to Add Comments to PDF: FAQs

How To Add Comments to a PDF in Preview？

Open the Preview app on your Mac. Use the text annotation tool located at the top right corner (represented by a pencil icon). Choose the desired text in the PDF to comment on. A yellow box will appear upon selection. Start adding comments by clicking the text input area within the box. Once finished, save the document to retain the changes.

Why Can’t I Add Sticky Notes to PDF?

That you can’t add sticky notes to a PDF may be because the PDF document is encrypted and set permissions, or the Review & Comment tools are not enabled. You can go to Tool > Protect to check.

How to Enable Commenting in Adobe Reader DC?

Open a PDF with Adobe Reader DC, and click the right toolbar in the “Comment” to open the comment mode. The three dots on the right side of the tab can expand or collapse all comments.

How to Enable Commenting in Adobe Reader 9?

To enable commenting in Adobe Reader 9, open Adobe Reader 9 and import documents > view document permissions in Document-Security-Show Security Properties > Tool > Comment & Markups.

How to Fix “Your File Contains Annotations that Prevent the File from being Sent for Commenting”?

Encountering your file contains annotations that prevent the file from being sent for commenting issues. In this case, you have to get access authority to this PDF from the original author.

Video Tutorial

Conclusion

When compared to Adobe Acrobat and Google Drive, PDFgear offers the advantage of occupying minimal storage space. PDFgear allows you to use it directly online without the need for any downloads. Additionally, PDFgear stands out for being completely free, providing you with unrestricted space for free usage.