Annotations don't show in Preview

When you annotate highlighted text in Preview, it creates a little sticky note on the right of the document which you can open to write your note or see/edit your note later. After closing my PDF on Preview, and when I opened it again, those disappeared. However, the notes appear on the sidebar and redirect me to the highlighted text when I click on it, but the sidebar only shows a preview of the note and to visualise the note or edit it, you need to be able to click on the little sticky note on the right, but I can't since it disappeared. How do I fix this?

MacBook Air 11″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 12, 2022 02:00 AM

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3 replies

Oct 13, 2022 08:51 AM in response to klaradumas

Greetings, klaradumas.


We’re glad to help! Have you tried restarting your Mac to see if that resolves the issue? Log out, sleep, wake, restart, or shut down your Mac - Apple Support. Even though this is a simple step, restarting can refresh macOS.


How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support -- If the issue remains, please restart your Mac in safe mode and test. Whether or not the issue occurs in safe mode, restart your Mac normally to exit. Please be aware that starting in safe mode takes a bit longer. This paragraph explains why:

Safe mode prevents your Mac from loading certain software as it starts up, including login items, system extensions not required by macOS, and fonts not installed by macOS. It also does a basic check of your startup disk, similar to using First Aid in Disk Utility. And it deletes some system caches, including font caches and the kernel cache, which are automatically created again as needed.

If the issue didn’t happen while your Mac was in safe mode, test the issue again.


Please let us know the results when you're able.


All the best.

Nov 9, 2022 06:06 AM in response to klaradumas

Thanks for trying those steps and getting back to us, klaradumas. It’s appreciated.


Since the problem continued while your Mac was in safe mode, that means the issue is system-wide. We recommend reinstalling macOS by following the steps in this article: How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support


Before you begin, we encourage you to back up your Mac first: Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support


Once the process is finished, test the issue again.


Take care.

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Annotations don't show in Preview

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