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How to Get PDF Highlights to Notes in 4 steps
Reading a research paper/lecture slides/book? Made a lot of highlights in the PDF? Now want to get them into your notes as text? Don’t want to have to type everything again? Here’s your way out. Hey. Reading a research paper or a long document is itself a lot of effort. After that, I do not have the energy to again copy everything properly into my notes. I have been searching for a way to do that, but none of the options I found work for two-column layouts, or even maintain page order properly.
(Disclaimer: I am not sponsored by, or hold any affiliations to any of the products mentioned below. I share them because I use them every day and think they would be useful to you.)
Table of Contents
∘ What We Want
∘ Existing Programs and… Their Flaws
∘ pdfannots
∘ Installing the script
∘ Getting your highlights!
∘ Specific Formatting
∘ Fin
What We Want
Convert highlights like in this document on the left to notes with minimal effort. I use a note application called Obsidian, but anything you use works here. As long as it supports text.
