How to Print a PDF Document With Comments

Printing a PDF with its annotations intact is one of those tasks that seems straightforward until you actually try it — and the comments either vanish entirely or print in a way that's hard to read. Understanding why this happens, and how to control it, saves a lot of frustration.

What "Printing With Comments" Actually Means

PDF annotations come in several forms: sticky notes, text highlights, strikethroughs, freehand drawings, stamps, and callout boxes. When you print a PDF normally, most viewers default to printing the document content only — annotations are treated as a separate layer and are often excluded.

"Printing with comments" means instructing your PDF software to include that annotation layer in the printed output. How that looks on paper depends on the type of annotation and the software you're using.

There are generally two approaches:

• Print annotations inline — comments appear visually on the page as they do on screen
• Print a comment summary — a separate page (or pages) is generated listing all annotations with page references

Both are legitimate options, and the right choice depends on what you're actually trying to do with the printout.

How to Print Comments in Adobe Acrobat (Reader and Pro) 🖨️

Adobe Acrobat is the most feature-complete tool for this, and the process is consistent across both the free Reader and the paid Pro versions.

To print annotations as they appear on screen:

1. Open your PDF in Acrobat
2. Go to File → Print
3. In the print dialog, find the Comments and Forms dropdown (usually near the top of the dialog)
4. Select Document and Markups or Document and Stamps depending on your annotation types
5. Print as normal

If you select Document only, comments will be stripped from the output — which is the default.

To print a comment summary separately:

1. Go to Tools → Comment
2. In the comment panel, look for the option to Print with Comment Summary or use Manage Comments → Print Comment Summary
3. Acrobat generates a formatted summary document with the annotations listed by page

The summary output is particularly useful for document review workflows, where a printed record of feedback needs to accompany a physical copy.

Printing PDF Comments in Other Common Tools

Not everyone uses Acrobat, and behavior varies significantly across applications.

Browser-based PDF viewers are the most common source of the "my comments disappeared" problem. Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all render PDFs using lightweight built-in engines that don't support annotation layers in print output. If you're printing from a browser and comments aren't showing, that's almost certainly why.

Apple Preview on macOS will print some annotation types — highlights and drawings may show — but sticky note contents are typically not printed. It has no comment summary feature.

Why Comment Type Matters

Even within tools that support annotation printing, not all comment types behave the same way. 📝

• Highlights and underlines are part of the visual layer and usually print without any special settings
• Sticky notes are pop-up annotations — they only display their content when opened on screen. To print their text, you typically need the comment summary feature, or you need to ensure the notes are expanded/open before printing
• Stamps and callouts are usually treated as visual markup and print inline
• Drawing annotations (freehand lines, shapes) generally print as rendered on screen

This distinction matters because reviewers often mix annotation types without realizing some will print and others won't without extra steps.

Variables That Affect Your Results

Getting annotations to print correctly isn't just about following the right steps — it depends on several factors specific to your situation:

Your PDF software version matters. Older versions of Acrobat Reader had different dialog layouts and different default behavior for annotations. The steps above reflect current versions but may look different in older installs.

How the PDF was created also plays a role. Some PDFs are flattened — meaning annotations were merged into the document layer — so they always print. Others have interactive annotation layers that require software support. If someone sent you a PDF with comments, how they saved it affects what you can do with it.

Your operating system and print drivers can occasionally strip annotation data depending on how the print job is processed. Printing to a PDF (using a virtual printer like Microsoft Print to PDF) sometimes behaves differently than printing to a physical device.

The annotation permissions on the document can also be a factor. Some PDFs have restricted permissions that limit what can be printed — this is less common in everyday use but relevant in legal, compliance, or enterprise document workflows.

Flattening as an Alternative

One reliable workaround is flattening the PDF before printing — this merges all annotation layers permanently into the document content. Once flattened, any printer and any viewer will show the comments because they're no longer a separate layer.

In Acrobat Pro, flattening is available under Print Production → Flatten Transparency, or via the Preflight tools. Some third-party tools and online PDF services also offer flattening.

The tradeoff: flattening is permanent. The annotations can no longer be edited, deleted, or interacted with as separate objects. It's the right move if you need a clean, universally printable record — but not if you or others still need to work with the comments.

What makes the ideal approach vary so much is that document review workflows, the tools available on a given device, and what the final printout needs to accomplish are all different for every user and every organization.