Export Adobe Acrobat comments of a PDF into a text file?

I have many PDFsf with 100s of annotations/comments in them, created through the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. By reading this official guide, and skimming trough related pages, I see that I can "export" the comments in FDF files or XFDF format.

However, these files can't be opened by themselves without the original, from the first link:

You cannot open and view FDF files or XFDF files on their own.

I would like to export the comments as a text file containing only the text of the comments.

2 Answers

This is a bit convoluted, but it works.
Follow the instructions here to export the comments and export them to an XFDF file:

1. Rename the file's extension to XML (i.e. if filename was "comments.xfdf", change its name to "comments.xml".

2. Open the XML file using google chrome.

3. Select all (Ctrl+A) and then copy (Ctrl+C).

4. Open a new Chrome window and navigate to this link (it creates a blank notepad):

    data:text/html,%20<html%20contenteditable>

5. Click on the white area and paste (Ctrl+V).

6. Select all (yes, again, Ctrl+A).

7. Copy (Ctrl+C).

8. Paste in a Word document.

Note: It may work with other browsers, but at least for me, when copying/pasting from Firefox, I'd end up with all the XML code in word.

• Open the fdf file in Notepad++

• Replace <body[^>]*>(.*?)<\/body> with 22222\133333 (don't forget to set search mode as regular expression and "matches newline")

• Put 33333 in the beginning of the document

• Put 22222 in the end of the document

• Replace 33333(.*?)22222 with an empty string

• Save file as .html document, open in browser

• Voila!

33333 and 22222 can be any sequence as long as it does not appear in your comments.