Toolbox and Favorites

To streamline your work, PDF Annotator offers a completely customizable Toolbox and a Favorites bar.

Displaying the Toolbox

The Toolbox is located on the Sidebar , and can be made visible by clicking any of its tabs, or through the menu by choosing View Sidebar Toolbox.

Tools and Favorites

The Pens, Markers, Text, Stamps and Graphical Tools tabs contain a variety of predefined tools. The Favorites tab contains an additional number of predefined tools. The first 12 (or in Full Screen Mode the first 24) favorites can be selected directly from the Toolbar of the same name. The Favorites Toolbar can be accessed by clicking the Heart icon on the toolbar above the document area.

Using Tools from the Toolbox

Just click the desired tool to use it.

Creating New Tools

Click the Add button in the Toolbox in order to open the Configure Tool window. The settings in the window are those for the most recently used tool. You can change and then save these settings, thereby creating a new object in the Toolbox.

Arranging Tools

Just use the mouse to move a tool to change its position in the Toolbox.

Adding Tools to Favorites

To copy a tool to the Favorites panel, click a tool in the Toolbox and press the Add Current Tool to Favorites button.

Modifying and Deleting Tools

To modify a tool, as, for example, to change the color of a pen, select the tool in the Toolbox and click the Edit button.

If you want to delete a tool, select it and press the Delete button in the Toolbox.

Grouping Tools

Organize your tools in groups, for example, to make them easier to locate. The Stamps tab, for example, by default contains a group called Proofreading which contains typical proofreading symbols.

To create a group, click the Tool icon on the top right of the toolbox, then select Create New Group. Right click a group header for Delete Group and Rename Group.

Importing and Exporting Tools

Export tools to transfer them to another computer (and import them there), or to save backups of your tools. For example, you could create a set of stamps to be used consistently within your work group. Now you could export those stamps, and make them available to your coworkers, so they can import and use them on their computers.

Right click on a tool in the toolbox and select Export Tool to export a single tool. Right clicking a group header provides the Export Group command. Click the Tool icon on the top right of the toolbox, for example on the Stamps tab, then select Export Stamps to save all groups and tools within the Stamps tab to a file. Select Export All Tools to save all tools from all tabs at once.

Tools will be saved in files with the .pat file name extension. To import these files (for example on a different computer, or after a re-installation), click the Tool icon on the top right of the toolbox, then select Import Tools. Now select the Tool Category to import, and choose between Append on existing tools or Replace existing tools.

Resetting Your Toolbox

You can always reset a single toolbox tab's content, or the whole toolbox. Click the Tool icon on the top right of the toolbox, for example on the Stamps tab, then select Reset Stamps to reset the tab to factory settings. You may also just empty the tab by selecting Clear Stamps.

To avoid loss of your own tools, we recommend to export all tools as a backup, as described above, before resetting or emptying.

See also