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Preview doesn't save changes

This happened already quite a view times. I am editing a pdf though preview (highlighting, adding comments) and after saving and reopening the same pdf, my whole work is gone. I saw some other persons have the same issue, and it seems to be a problem for a long time now. It's time to fix that. I don't want to lose my work all the time.


OS: macOs Catalina (10.15.7)



MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 26, 2020 6:28 AM

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Posted on Nov 27, 2020 7:15 AM

In my own observations with adding/changing/removing PDF annotatations with Preview, across several versions of macOS, it autosaves the changes locally within 10 seconds, and variably longer if on iCloud Drive. Preview was written to behave this way on Apple supported filesystems, and iCloud. Any non-Apple storage, or cloud destination could introduce issues with autosave.


I do not use any other cloud service, or filesystem other than what Apple provides, and I have never lost PDF document content, or annotations using Preview.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 27, 2020 7:15 AM in response to DevelopingCoffee

In my own observations with adding/changing/removing PDF annotatations with Preview, across several versions of macOS, it autosaves the changes locally within 10 seconds, and variably longer if on iCloud Drive. Preview was written to behave this way on Apple supported filesystems, and iCloud. Any non-Apple storage, or cloud destination could introduce issues with autosave.


I do not use any other cloud service, or filesystem other than what Apple provides, and I have never lost PDF document content, or annotations using Preview.

Preview doesn't save changes

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