Hello
A client reported to us that the “Import Annotations” button does not work in IE, but does work in Google Chrome. I have verified that and we decided to hide the button as we don’t see that it is necessary.
I have not found how to do that however. The Groupdocs.Common.AnnotationReviewerRights does not have a enum value for that button.
This raises also the question for what that button is. The tooltip says “Import annotations” but what the button does is that it opens up a “Choose file to upload” dialog. When I upload a pdf for example it is shown in the viewer. If that’s all that it is supposed to do then shouldn’t the tooltip say something like “Open another file”. Annotations are stored in the DB.sdf database file for I am not relly “importing annotations”. I can’t find any documentation about this button either.
Can you clarify please?
Greetings
Róbert Badí
Hello Robert,
"…the “Import Annotations” button does not work in IE…" - to be honest, we were not able to reproduce it. We’ve tested this feature using the latest version of GroupDocs.Annotation 1.8.0 in IE 10 - import works fine. Maybe, the reason why it is not working will be more clear and understandable with my explanations below.
Yes, we agree that “Groupdocs.Common.AnnotationReviewerRights” enum doesn’t have an option to allow or disallow importing. If you want we can add such feature request to our roadmap.
Now what about the “Import annotation” feature and how it works. “Import annotation” is designed for transferring annotated documents between users. Let’s assume there are userA and userB. They both work with GroupDocs.Annotation, but on different web-sites, and have different documents, different annotations, and different databases. userB cannot see the documents and annotations, which were added by userA, because each of them is working with separate database. But userA wants to send his document with annotations to userB somehow. In order to do this he makes a document export (using the appropriate button on toolbar or programmatically), with or without comments, and GroupDocs.Annotation provides him an exported PDF. This PDF is a version of original document with all annotations (and comments, if chosen) embedded inside it. Then userA sends this PDF to the userB. userB, in turn, uploads it to the GroupDocs.Annotation using “Import annotation” button. GroupDocs.Annotation analyzes PDF-document, stores it to the local storage (<root_storage>/temp/Uploads/), adds a record to the “file-sessions.json”, extracts all annotations from the document and stores them to the database. Finally, userB sees a document from userA with all added annotations (and comments).
So, concluding, “Import annotation” feature works only with PDF files, which were generated by the GroupDocs.Annotation during exporting operation. This feature is useless and redundant, if all your users work with a single GroupDocs.Annotation instance, which is located on a single web-site with a single database.
Thanks.
Hello Robert,
In addition to what has said Denis I can also suggest you a workaround which allows you to hide the button. The solution is a simple CSS code which you should add to the head section of the web page with GroupDocs.Annotation. Please use this code:
.h_t_i_import {
display:none !important;
}
Thank you both, Denis and Pavel!
Thanks for the detailed explanation of the feature. It would be good to add the option to the roadmap as you suggested. For now the CSS solution works so we will use that.
Best regards