Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft SharePoint: New annotation layout and tools for editing PDFs

Updated April 8, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft SharePoint: A new PDF annotation layout that features a more intuitive design. After this rollout, all annotation tools will be in a single row at the top of the screen, including a new type of eraser that can remove pen and highlighter annotations pixel by pixel.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 483156.

This message applies to One Drive for the web and SharePoint Online.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early April 2025 (previously late March) and expect to complete by mid-April 2025.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-April 2025 (previously late March) and expect to complete by early May 2025 (previously mid-April).

How this will affect your organization:

To use the new annotation layout:

1. Find the PDF saved in OneDrive or Microsoft SharePoint and select the PDF to open it.

2. Select Edit at the top right of the screen to access the annotation tools. Note: When editing in OneDrive or SharePoint, ignore the Edit in app option in the dropdown menu next to Edit, which will open the PDF in another PDF tool such as Adobe Acrobat.

3. All annotation tools are found at the top of the screen:

To erase existing pen or highlighter annotations:

1. Find the PDF saved in OneDrive or SharePoint and select the PDF open it.
2. Select Edit at the top right of the screen to access the annotation tools.
3. Select Eraser from the annotation toolbar and left click with the mouse to delete with precision (pixel by pixel).
4. Select Save changes at the top left of the screen.

To delete an entire pen or highlighter annotation, choose one of these options:

1. Select an existing annotation and then select the Delete key on the keyboard.
2. Select the trash icon at the top left of the selected annotation.

The Eraser tool does not work for Text annotations.

This change will be available to users by default.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.