Check for newly published comments

When you participate in a shared review, Acrobat synchronizes published comments on your local drive with those on the comment server, and then notifies you when new comments are available. Notifications appear as bezel-style messages in the open PDF. In Windows, notifications also appear as balloon-style messages in the notification area (system tray). Because synchronization continues after the PDF is closed, you’ll continue to receive notifications.

Messages in the notification area inform you when new reviewers join the review, when updates occur (multiple reviews), and when synchronization attempts fail. They also inform you when a new broadcast subscription is added in the Review Tracker. You can change how often messages appear and how often comments are synchronized, and you can manually trigger the synchronization process.

View new comments

To view new comments, you must be able to connect to the network where the comment server is located. If you can’t connect, check the server status in the Review Tracker to determine the cause of the problem. (See Check server status.)

 Do one of the following:

  • Click the Check For New Comments button  in the document message bar.

  • Choose Comments > Check For New Comments.

  • Click the message in the notification area (Windows).

Change frequency of synchronization and notifications

  1. Open the Reviewing preferences:

    • Choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat > Preferences (Mac OS), and then click Reviewing on the left.

    • In Windows, right-click the notification icon  in the notification area, and choose Reviewing Preferences.

  2. Move the sliders to change the following settings:
    Option Description
    Check For New Comments

    The top slider specifies (in minutes) how often comments are synchronized when a shared PDF is open. The bottom slider specifies (in hours, weeks, days, or months) how often comments are synchronized when a shared PDF is closed.

    Show Review Tracker Alerts

    Specifies how often alert messages appear.

Disable notifications

 Do one of the following:

  • Choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat > Preferences (Mac OS), click Reviewing on the left, move the slider for Show Review Tracker Alerts to the far left until the value Never appears, and then click OK.

  • In Windows, right-click the notification icon  in the notification area. If a check mark appears next to Show Review Notifications, select that option so a check mark no longer appears.