How to Annotate Text in a PDF

Learn to annotate text in a PDF document while exerting the PyMuPDF Python library.

Introduction

Annotating is an old concept that helps us in better understanding, remembering, and making connections to key information in a document.

Annotating helps draw the reader’s attention to paramount information in a document, and to give them an efficient means for picking up and reviewing this particular information when needed at a later stage. There are four types of annotations available: highlight, underline, strikeout, and squiggle.

With the increasing popularity of the PDF file format, the need to design and implement an efficient PDF annotator is also emerging.

Python is one of the right choices to achieve this task in a successful manner.

Objective

Upon completing this section we will have grasped the steps required to develop a Python utility for annotating a PDF document. Additionally, we will learn the mechanism required to remove the added annotations.

Process flowchart

The following figure showcases the flowchart of the process to be implemented:

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