Making names used to create comments anonymous

[Prepress_Projects@adobeforums.com]

Is there any way to make user names in comments anonymous?

We receive several hundred PDFs of academic/medical/science research each year, many of which have previously applied comments embedded.

We are looking for a quick way of changing the user name in the comments to something like 'Anonymous'.

The PDFs are subsequently sent to other researchers for blind peer review, and it is important that the PDFs contain no indication of who authored or commented on the document previously.

We know that we can change names in comments one by one using Properties. What we want is a global way of changing/replacing the user names used to create previously applied comments and sticky notes.

Using Acrobat 9 on Mac OS X 10.5.4.

[Michael Kazlow]

I know of no way to make comments anonymous without going throught each
one. The best way to handle this is to ask each commenter to use an name
that you can associate with them before the commenting process has begun.

Mike

[George_Johnson@adobeforums.com]

You can use JavaScript. The JavaScript would loop through the collection of the relevant type of annotations and modify the "author" property of each. You could do this in a batch sequence, or if you just want to do this to a single document at a time, you could set up a custom menu item or custom toolbar item.

George

[marc_legros@adobeforums.com]

I have the same problem. Adobe phone support was helpless and I don't know Java.
I am bound to suppress my identity manually in the 120+ comments on this scientific paper I am supposed to peer review.
I'll try another reader next time (I bought this version 8 of Adobe Acrobat Pro!!! what a waste)

[Sabian_Zildjian@adobeforums.com]

You will want to use something like this:

//Begin code
//Change the author property in an annotation:
// Assumes that the author property is the text "PrePress Projects"

var myAnnots = this.getAnnots();
for (i = 0; i < myAnnots.length; i++) {if (myAnnots[i].author.match(/PrePress Projects/)) myAnnots[i].author = myAnnots[i].author.replace(/PrePress Projects/, "anonymous");}

//End code

Sabian

[George_Johnson@adobeforums.com]

To be safe, add a call to the syncAnnotScan() method before the rest of the code above. You can run this code from the JavaScript console as well if you don't want to bother with a batch sequence, menu item, or toolbar button.

George

[sprale@adobeforums.com]

You can try Skim, but Acrobat will not see the comments.

[Unregistered]

You can request to your reviewers to follow the instructions described in this link:
http://www.botany.org/ajb/Annotating_Manuscripts_Anonymously.pdf