How to Take Notes on a PDF

Have you ever looked through a PDF and felt inspired to add notes of your thoughts and ideas, but didn’t know how? You may not have time to grab a notebook or open a separate app to jot down your notes.


Also, it’s so convenient to take notes on the same document you’re looking at because you can annotate the text you’re reading and make more sense. Luckily, you can easily take notes on a PDF. In this article, you will find six methods that you can use to make notes on a PDF.


1. Desk lamp

If you are looking for an effective way to take notes for your research and assignments, Desklamp is the best tool for it.

Desklamp is a PDF reader that increases your productivity by allowing you to explore features like notes, highlighting, searching in your document and other useful features. Desklamp’s note taking tool is easy to use; all you have to do is follow these steps:

  1. Open your PDF with Desklamp.
  2. On the right side of the page, the notebook workspace is open by default. Click the Add button next to My notebooks to create a notebook.
  3. Navigate to the section where you want to add a note.
  4. Click and drag the text you want to add notes to. Select from the menu that appears Add to Notes.
  5. Add your notes and change the text that appears in your notes to your liking.

2. Microsoft Edge

This is one of those Microsoft Edge productivity features that you won’t want to be without. Microsoft Edge has one of the easiest methods you can use to make notes on a PDF. In the updated version of Microsoft Edge, you can easily add notes to your PDF without installing any PDF editor. Here’s how:

  1. Open your PDF file with Microsoft Edge.
  2. right click next to the section where you want to add notes.
  3. Choose add text.
  4. Add your notes and choose your text color, size and spacing.
  5. Position your notes by dragging the text box.
  6. click Save on computer in the top right corner to keep your changes.

3. Embed in Notation

Notion is a productivity and note-taking platform that lets you write and collaborate on projects, and take notes on PDF documents. To embed a PDF in Notion and take notes from a PDF, you need to do the following:

  1. open term.
  2. Click on add page on the left side of the page.
  3. Type ‘/ show commands.
  4. Scroll down and search for Embed. Click on it and upload or embed your PDF link.
  5. Take notes from your PDF by clicking comment Icon in the menu in the upper right corner of the PDF file.

4. OneNote

You can import a PDF file into OneNote and create your notes in OneNote. To make notes on a PDF in OneNote, you need to do the following:

  1. Open OneNote.
  2. Click on add page bottom left of page.
  3. Choose insertionin the top bar.
  4. Click on Expressand paste your PDF.
  5. Double-tap the area where you want to add notes and start typing your notes.

5.Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word makes it easy to create and edit your files. You can either add notes next to specific sections of the document, or copy notes from the PDF file and paste them at the bottom of the page to create your own notes. To make notes on a PDF in Microsoft Word, you need to do the following:

  1. Open your PDF file via Microsoft Word.
  2. Make sure the PDF document is editable.
  3. Copy the section you think is relevant.
  4. Paste the text at the end of the page or on an additional blank page.

Alternatively, you can simply add your own notes to any section of the PDF by annotating next to each sentence or paragraph.

6. Wondershare PDFelement

If you are looking for a tool that offers you various PDF options to take notes, this is the one for you. Wondershare PDFelement is a tool that lets you explore a variety of features to enhance your PDF documents.

With this tool you can translate text to another language and also edit the document by adding text. Follow these steps to make notes on a PDF:

  1. Open your PDF file via Wondershare PDFelement.
  2. click comment at the top of the screen.
  3. Go to note Icon positioned below outlook.
  4. Click anywhere on the document and paste your notes.
  5. Right-click the note to change properties.

Take your PDF documents to the next level

You can do so much more with PDF files than just read the information they contain. As you can see, you can add notes to your PDF file for joint projects or just to improve your own understanding. In any case, both methods presented in this article will help you to add notes to a PDF.

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