Review: iAnnotate — sophisticated PDF tool for the iPad

I work with a large number of PDF files in my law practice, and I’m sure that I’m not alone.  All federal court pleadings on PACER are in PDF format and many state courts are moving to PDF electronic documents, other counsel frequently send me files in PDF format, when I do legal research I download the cases in PDF format, exhibits are in PDF format, etc.  Perhaps most importantly, when I know that I’m going to work with a document on my iPad, I usually prefer that it be in PDF format.  The iPad has the built-in ability to view PDF files, and the free Adobe Reader app offers even more options, but for professional work with PDF files it is nice to have a more powerful app.  A few weeks ago, Branchfire sent me a free review copy of their $9.99 app iAnnotate, and I am incredibly impressed.  This seems to be the most powerful and sophisticated app that I’ve seen for working with PDF files on the iPad.  I am not sure that I would recommend this app to a mere casual iPad user because it is going to be overkill, but for those who want all of the tools at their disposal, this is a fantastic app.

There is typically a tension with PDF apps.  On the one hand, you want to have access to lots of tools to annotate a document.  On the other hand, you don’t want all of those tools cluttering up the screen when you are just trying to read a document.  iAnnotate strikes a perfect balance by providing tools on both the left side of the screen that you can easily make disappear with only a tiny tab remaining so that you can access them again when you need them.  Similarly, you can tap in the middle to make the tools at the top disappear, or tap again to see them.

Let’s talk about those tools at the top.  The top left tab brings you to the main screen (more on that in a moment) but most of the tools at the top are tabs to your open PDF documents.  Keeping multiple PDFs open at a time is incredibly useful, making it easy to switch back and forth between several documents.  The gear at the far right brings up app preferences, and right next to it is a Dropbox circle.  If you are reading a document that you accessed from your Dropbox account and you have modified the document on your iPad, the circle turns red to warn you that you are working with a changed version of the document.  But if you tap that circle (or close the document) the changes are synced back to Dropbox.  It is a great Dropbox integration that works really well.

On the right there are tools to work with the document.  All of the common tools are there in the default toolbar, but what makes this app truly useful is that you can both modify the default toolbar and create your own additional toolbars.  A simple flick from the right side of the screen switches between your active toolbars, so you can create toolbars with different tools for different types of tasks.

And boy are there a lot of tools to choose from.  Here is a picture showing all of them, which I had to stitch together from three different screen shots on the iPad:

The tools include, for example, two instances of the pencil tool so that you can use one set by default to drop thin black lines and another set by default to draw thick, translucent yellow lines (useful for highlighting a scanned document).  There is also a true highlighting tool which works great with OCR’d documents.  There are tools for navigating within the document, tools for rotating the document, and tools for adding and working with bookmarks.  You can use the standard pencil tool to sign a document, or you can use a specialized signature tool that makes it easier to sign and create a stamp of your signature that you can quickly and easily apply in the future. 

Speaking of stamps, the app comes with a lot of built-in ones, and you can add any picture as a stamp.  I created a picture of an Exhibit sticker and made a stamp out of it so that I can easily place virtual exhibit stickers on documents.  For a stamp you use frequently, you can even create a custom stamp tool for the toolbar on the right that applies that specific stamp; the icon on the stamp tool even changes to a picture of that stamp.

If you ever need to save a copy of a website, iAnnotate does a better job than any of the browsers on my computer.  And there is even a tool icon that brings up the full list of tools so that you can quickly select one that isn’t normally on one of your toolbars.

And those are just the tools on the right side of the screen.  On the left side of the screen, there are five sets of tools such as Thumbnails and Actions that give you even more options for editing aspects of the document, copying a document, etc.

On the main screen, you can view a list of files that are local on the device (either in list view or in icon view) or tap Connections to access cloud-based storage such as Dropbox.

When it is time to export documents, you can either keep your annotations intact or export a flattened PDF document. 

iAnnotate also has the ability to annotate Microsoft Word documents.  This is a really neat and useful feature.  Simply open a Word document in iAnnotate and as you start to annotate the document, the app will create a PDF version of the document.  You can then highlight, markup in a red pen, etc. all over the document and then you can email that PDF file to someone else.  If you want to markup a brief for another attorney or secretary to make the edits, iAnnotate is a powerful tool for doing so.

Even after a few weeks of using this app, I know that I am still just scratching the surface of what it does.  Suffice it to say that if you want a sophisticated tool for working with PDF files on your iPad, and if you don’t mind a slight learning curve to figure out everything that this app can do, iAnnotate is an excellent choice.

Click here to get iAnnotate ($9.99): 

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11 thoughts on “Review: iAnnotate — sophisticated PDF tool for the iPad”

  1. Jeff, nice review. I have been an iAnnotate fan since it came out. It is my main PDF app on the iPad (on the iPhone I use either the built in PDF reader or GoodReader).
    One great feature of iAnnotate you may not have discovered is that you can have the same document in multiple tabs so you can compare different parts of the same document easily. Just tap on the tab and select “Duplicate Tab.”
    Much as I love this program, it’s main flaw has always been a lack of shape drawing. You can draw lines, but not circles, squares or arrows. You can make a stamp, of course, but that is really not a substitute.
    Another flaw (which some might see as a feature) is that when you select a tool (say, the highlighter) all of the annotations you make until you deselect the tool are considered a single annotation. If you deselect and later want to delete one highlighted segment and keep the rest, no dice. There is no way to erase part of an annotation.
    My recommendation for people who just need to read PDFs and do some light commenting is GoodReader, which has a more straightforward interface. But if you are a serious user of PDFs, iAnnotate is the way to go. iPad apps are so inexpensive, there’s no reason not to try a couple of choices and see what fits. I’ve been checking out PDF Expert lately because it was on sale for $4.99. At this point I am so used to iAnnotate I’ll probably stick with it, but PDF Expert will draw shapes, which is cool.

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  2. Jeff, I tried iAnnotate a while ago and rejected it because of its uniquely unsatisfactory erase feature, which Jonathan correctly describes. Here’s Branchfire’s description: http://support.branchfire.com/customer/portal/articles/973903.
    At least for my work, this approach is unacceptable. I generally use GoodNotes or Notability, which like iAnnotate (although not nearly as elegantly) converts Word documents to PDFs. Also like iAnnotate, but unlike GoodReader or GoodNotes, Notability gives you a cintuous vertical scroll, which I find really convenient.

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  3. I’m another long-time fan of this app, and every update improves it. It’s very impressive.
    It’s easy to keep annotating using the same tool without running into the problem Jonathan mentions. After you select the tool, you can switch between “scroll” and “markup” on the tool menu at top right. Each new “markup” is a new annotation, and you can delete them separately.

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  4. Can anyone give some advice on the integration with GoodReader, which I prefer as my premier file management app. Is it straightforward to have a PDF in GoodReader, then ‘open in’ iAnnotate, make annotations, and then somehow save the PDF back to GoodReader, so that the annotated file will sync when all my files are synchronised via GoodReader/Dropbox? Thanks in anticipation.

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  5. In the toolkit (icon), there is the option to Open in External Application under the Document tab. You are prompted to pick how it is saving the file and the next screen you are prompted for the app. Select Good Reader.

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  6. I also love this app, but have struck a couple of really irritating email issues with it.
    After making annotations on the iPad using iAnnotate, and then sending the annotated pdf via email – either I get an email back saying there was ‘no attachment’ (which seems very weird since the send was initiated within iAnnotate) or the annotation is missing from the sent pdf.Yesterday I received an invoice from a tradie who used iAnnotate, and although the email showed an attachment, nothing was visible in the email – just a long blank space after the signature block – I tapped and held on this blank space and Open In options appeared. I selected iAnnotate and voila – the pdf emerged.
    I have tried iAnnotate’s suggested force quit/reboot advice but this has made no difference. My workaround for sending is to take a screen shot, crop it and send the jpg… it works but I dont appreciate having to do the extra work every time.
    Anyone else struck this problem?

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  7. I bought
    the software 4 years ago and it was perfect. It was stable and allowed also sending pdf and folders connecting the iPad and the mac in wifi.
    In those years they have been “improving ” it decreasing this flexibility and creating at every single time problems with my notes, indexes, tags,
    The last “improvement” has erased my full library forever since the contemporaneous updated of iOS make the back up I did useless.
    .I am sorry for the many friends I have given the wrong advice, butI am still incredulous about how they have been able to develop theyr software in such a way.
    If you store relevant informations don’t buy this software

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  8. I am disappointed with latest version of iAnnotate on my new iPad Pro. What are lawyers using today instead of iAnnotate? I am a partner over 60 who reviews and comments drafts prepared by others.

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