PDFs

Open a PDF from Files to read it alongside your notes. Use Find to search its text, or open Outline for bookmarks, comments and page thumbnails. You can drag across text, even across pages, to select and copy it.

Link a passage to a note

Select the passage, then right-click and choose Copy Link to Selection. Paste the link into a note, for example [[paper.pdf#page=1&selection=0,6,0,15|a useful result]]. Accent highlights the passage in the PDF, and clicking the highlight opens the note. Following the link from the note returns to that passage. The highlight lives in the note, so sharing the PDF alone will not carry it. If you need marks in the PDF itself, choose Export Highlights from the page menu.

Draw and arrange pages

Select Drawing in the header to open the tool ring. It offers Pen, Highlighter, Eraser, Line, Rectangle, Circle, Text and Select. The Drawing toggle is remembered separately for each PDF, and a new PDF opens with its tools hidden. Choose a width or colour from the tool’s options. If a stylus is connected, it draws while the mouse selects text. To draw with the mouse instead, turn on Draw with the Mouse in Preferences. Touch drags pan the page, two fingers zoom, and a long press begins a text selection.

Choose Text and click the page to type, then finish with Ctrl+Return, Esc or a click elsewhere. Click text you added with the same tool to edit it again. The tool accepts Latin-1 and Windows-1252 characters, including the euro and typographic quotes.

Choose Select to pick ink strokes or text and pictures added in Accent. Draw a lasso around a group, or click an item to pick it. Ctrl+click adds or removes items, and a selection stays on one page. Drag the selection to move it, use its handles to resize strokes and pictures, or its rotation ring to turn them. Pictures keep their proportions, and typed text can only be moved. Use the tool ring or the page menu to cut, copy, paste, duplicate or delete the selection. The same actions use Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+D and Delete. Arrow keys move a selection by one point, or ten with Shift, and Esc releases it. Colour on the ring recolours selected strokes and typed text. The palette offers the same swatches as Recolour Selection commands.

Paste an image with Ctrl+V, or drop an image file onto the page, to add it to the PDF. Use Select to move, resize, rotate or copy it, including into another PDF.

Use the thumbnails in Outline to move pages by dragging them. Their buttons insert or delete a page, and the page menu offers the same actions. You can also drop another PDF between pages to insert its pages there. Press Ctrl+Z to undo a drawing, text, picture or page edit. Accent saves these edits in the PDF and updates page links in your notes when pages move. To start a blank drawing, use New File, give it a .pdf ending and choose a page size.

Print, export and colours

Use Print… or Export as PDF… to share the PDF with your ink and note highlights. The original PDF stays as it was. The viewer can recolour pages to match your theme, and Invert PDF Colours changes one document’s appearance. You can turn PDF recolouring off in Preferences.

See Keyboard shortcuts for reading and drawing keys. On Android, PDF reading and links work differently.