How To Change The Author For PDF Comments In Acrobat or Reader
Changing The Default Author For All Future Comments
When adding comments, like text highlighting, stamps, and other annotation markups, the default author of those comments is your computer login. Suppose your computer login is your first name, but you want your full name as the author of comments. Or what if you need your company as the author, or a department in your company. How do you change the author, not for existing comments, but for all comments that your create?
I previously wrote about Acrobat default settings that can be accessed by selecting Edit > Preferences form the Acrobat or Reader menu, or by pressing Ctrl + k on the keyboard (Windows OS). Under the Commenting > Making Comments category is a check box Always use Log-in Name for Author name. Whether this box is checked or not, the author of your comments is most likely your login name.
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Not Very Intuitive
How to change the author is one of the many Adobe maneuvers that is not very intuitive. One would think that if the box is checked, and you uncheck it, there would be another field close by that said something like "Enter the author name here". Nope. If the box is checked and you uncheck it, the software will continue using the login name as the author unless you do something else. By the way, you can see the login name under Edit > Preferences > Identity > Login Name. It is the only identity field that is not enabled so you can't change it there, nor should you be able to since it is your computer login name.
Set The Default Author of Any Comment
All you have to do is create a comment (stamp, highlight, square, etc.), change the author, and then make the properties of that comment the default properties. How?
Right-click the comment and select Properties.
In the General tab, change the Author field to whatever you want.
Check the box Make Properties Default.
Click OK.
Now, as long as the Always use Log-in Name for Author name check box remains unchecked in the preferences, the author of all future comments will be the default that you just set for the author. The preferences check box will override the default if it is checked. Unless you have a hard shutdown of Adobe, the default author will be remembered in every session.
This comment property default affects all comment types and is not unique to the specific comment type, like most of the other annotation defaults.
If you have any questions or comments about this post, please leave a comment. See you next time…