save PDF notes as a .fdf file? Or save PDF annotations separately?

Help
1

Hello, may I ask if it is possible to save PDF notes as a .fdf file? Or is there a way to save PDF annotations separately?

2

I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but exporting to .fdf file will retain only filled data in PDF Forms and ignore any inline, popup or text annotation.

.fdf file can be used to automatically fill PDF forms from another PDF, you can create it using pdftk toolkit:

generate_fdf
Reads a single input PDF file and generates an FDF file suit-
able for fill_form out of it to the given output filename or
(if no output is given) to stdout. Does not create a new
PDF.

  1. First fill your PDF Forms inside Okular

  2. Create .fdf file
    pdftk input_filled_with_data.pdf generate_fdf output data.fdf

  3. Then fill empty PDF Forms with those data
    pdftk input_with_empty_forms.pdf fill_form data.fdf output output_filled.pdf

After looking at the generated PDF, it seems that Okular saves its annotations and filled Forms at different tags, and generate_fdf operation exports only Forms annotations under /AcroForm tag

Screenshot_20240225_223456
Screenshot_20240225_2234561366×768 142 KB

3

Thanks a lot! I’ll give it a try.