Want to review and mark up PDFs without needing Adobe Acrobat or downloading files? 🖊️
In this video we explore the Annotations feature now built into SharePoint and OneDrive. You’ll learn how to enable it, annotate directly in the browser, and even collaborate with users who only have view access.
This is a zero-cost feature once Pay-As-You-Go is enabled—and it supports AI files, PDFs, and more.
🎯 What you’ll learn:
✔️How SharePoint in-browser annotations work
✔️Why this feature can save $$$ on licenses
✔️Tips for effective collaboration on files like PDFs and AI assets
✔️Which file types are supported
🔗 Related: Pay-As-You-Go setup video
📌 This is part of our Ultimate SharePoint Content AI series — check out the full playlist to go even deeper.
Watch my 100+ courses on Pluralsight
Video Summary
- Work with Adobe files right in your browser – No need to install or download anything. You can annotate PDFs and Illustrator files directly in SharePoint, OneDrive, or Teams using built-in tools like pens and highlighters.
- View-only users can annotate too – Even if someone only has view permissions, they can still add annotations. This makes it super easy to gather feedback from a wider audience without changing file permissions.
- Annotations are overlays, not edits – Your original file stays untouched. Annotations are layered on top and can be shown or hidden at any time. Just remember, this isn’t a redaction tool—it doesn’t remove or secure content.
- Supports more than just PDFs – You can also annotate AI, EPUB, and DVG files. Perfect for design teams and business users to collaborate without needing expensive software licenses.
- Free to use once Pay-As-You-Go is enabled – After a quick setup of Microsoft 365’s Pay-As-You-Go services, annotations are completely free to use. We have a video in the series that will walk you through the setup in just a few minutes.
For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!
Transcript
Did you ever wish to work with Adobe files directly in the browser without having it installed on your machine—or even better, without even having to download the file? With the annotations feature in SharePoint, you can now highlight and mark up the most important parts of your documents. And best of all, it’s free. All you have to do is enable it.
In this video, I’m joined by Microsoft MVP Drew Madelung, who will deep dive into the annotations feature in SharePoint. Drew, thank you so much again for joining me.
Thank you for having me, Vlad. So my name is Drew Madelung, MVP here focused on SharePoint and OneDrive, and today we’re going to be talking about annotations as part of the Content AI series. So what we’re going to go through is what annotations are inside of SharePoint and OneDrive, what you can do with them, and a few helpful tips when you’re working with annotations and files that you have today.
Awesome. And for those of you who are new to the series, like Drew mentioned, this is the 10th episode in the series. So if you want to learn more about Content AI and document processing in SharePoint, you’ll have a link to the rest of the playlist at the bottom in the description below.
So what are annotations inside of SharePoint and OneDrive as part of Content AI? What annotations do is they actually enable you to view, highlight, and comment directly in the browser on files such as PDFs that are stored in SharePoint and OneDrive. So I can open up a file in Teams, I can open up a file in OneDrive, I can open a file in my SharePoint document library, and I can take that PDF file and provide annotations on top of that file directly in the browser. I don’t need to, as Vlad said, we don’t need to download it, I don’t need to work with Acrobat, I can work in the browser to mark up my documentation, my documents.
So what it looks like is once you’ve enabled the Microsoft 365 Pay-As-You-Go services, you will get a new—you open up a file and the file viewer in the browser will give you a new little icon that looks like a pen, a little pen icon. So once it’s enabled, it will show up in all of your documents across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. So what you get when you click that is a “Show Annotations” option and “Hide Annotations” option depending on it. So by default, you don’t see annotations; you don’t have that option. You want to provide your team with education on how this works so they know that they can do it.
So what you do is you open a supported file in SharePoint and OneDrive, you click the annotate icon in that file viewer experience, and it gives you a pen or highlighter. Those are going to be the two options we have. So the pen is that top option, that’s the black pen you have by default, and a yellow highlighter. Once you click into either of those, you have the option to select multiple colors and the size of that markup. So I can annotate a larger highlighter color, a yellow highlighter color, a green pen, a black pen—you get to dictate that. But you choose that color and size, and then if you need to, the option you have is to erase. The last one is erased. So pen, highlighter, and erase markup directly in the browser.
Now, you can click and drag on those files to annotate them. So when I move them around, I actually can show or hide that based on—as I click through, I can pick show or hide. So I can click and drag files, show and hide them as I need them.
So let’s take a look at what that actually looks like. So annotations in SharePoint and OneDrive. So I’m going to go into my SharePoint site in my OneDrive, and I’m going to look at a couple of files that I have in here. I have a couple of PDF files and an AI file. The first thing I’m going to show you is this PDF file. So when I open up this PDF file, it’s going to load in the modern file viewer, and you’re going to see in the top left I have this toolbar. And in that toolbar, I have this pen icon. If I hover over it, you’re going to see it says “Show Annotations.” When I click that, it’s going to bring up—you’ll see the comment pane on the right, but also the new annotation pane on the left. So we have our choice area, and then we have the pen, the highlighter, and the eraser.
When I click into the pen, it will pull up the selected colors I can choose and the size that I would want to use. So I could take this and—let’s red pen, let’s make it a pretty large red pen—and let’s say I don’t want to have this word “SharePoint.” We’re going to call it something else. We’re probably going to call it “Copilot.” I’m going to take—everything is Copilot. We’re going to say the 2.5 billion files are actually—I don’t want to do that. I want to get rid of that. I don’t want to say “weather.” I just want to say it’s simple. And I’m going to highlight some information in here. Let’s make it yellow to say I want to make sure we focus onthe business process. Let’s say a comment that says “Make sure we update these annotations.”
So I can work similarly to Office comments, similar to collaborating with content with people, which is a highly used feature if I’m in Word or PowerPoint. You can take this all natively in the file viewer. I can then hide those annotations. I can show those annotations. So what happens is they’re actually an overlay on the file. I’m not overwriting the file or taking that content. And let’s say if you wanted to block some of that out and say I don’t want to see it, it doesn’t remove that. It’s showing and hiding an overlay on top of that file that’s stored inside of SharePoint and OneDrive. So I can print this if I need to, but I can’t download it. The overlays are stored inside SharePoint and OneDrive today.
Awesome. And do I need edit permissions on the document to do that?
So you do not need edit permissions for this. So if I take this AI file right here that I’ve modified, and let’s say I go into it and I can show some annotations. So here’s a file of some new t-shirt fonts that I want, or some t-shirts that I want to build. And you’ll see I already had some markup on here. I already had a red circle on this. I can add some other highlighting. Let’s say I want to make sure we highlight this guy. Maybe let’s do a little annotation here and say I want to make a face. This is going to be the new shirt style that we’re building. And leave it like this, right? Let’s say it needs some work.
So I can take this, I can do some markup on it, and I can close this. And what you see, I’ve also shared this file. So I go to manage access. I’ve shared this file with another user called Ultron, who only has view access. So if I come over to Ultron here, you’ll see Magneto has invited me to this file. It’s an AI file. As I open up this file, you’ll see that I have the ability to see those overlays that are as part of it. And we’ll be able to modify that from an overlay perspective and add my annotations with just view permissions.
So you’ll see I am actually still actively in this with both people—with both myself and Magneto. Once this loads, you’ll see I have the annotations that are live in here. I have that wonderful face. I’m going to take this pen and let’s make it—actually, let’s give him some purple eyes. Make those nice and purple. I think that’s a better way to look at it. And maybe give him a tooth. Yeah. And so you can see I can’t edit the comments as part of that, but from an overlay perspective, that file—that overlay has been added. That annotation has been added for me as Ultron. I can show and hide it. If I close it, when I go back and open this file up as my Magneto account here, it will show the annotations that Ultron made.
So it does not require the view—you can send this. So I could work with you on a file, make modifications to it, come back in and see the changes that have happened from someone who does not even need to have edit access.
That’s amazing, because now you’re working in an Adobe Illustrator file, and that’s what designers work with. That’s what a lot of user experience designers work with. But those are expensive licenses. Not everybody has them. But we still need the input from the business user. So being able to see them at my own time and not having to schedule an in-person meeting with a designer so I can be by them at their desk because they’re the only ones that can open it—that’s amazing.
And you can share that with larger audiences. So if you want to gather feedback on, let’s say, a community or a marketing campaign that you want to have, you build some single materials that you obviously—you’re not giving Adobe Illustrator to everyone. To your point, you can send an email and say, “Can someone provide some comments and annotations against this? I’d like some before we send it out for public release.”
That’s amazing. Now, this only works in SharePoint and OneDrive in the browser, right? So there’s not something on my client side that I would work with? You do need to be working in that file experience. So if you are still on file shares, this is only supported in Microsoft 365. As I said, they do not alter the image—it is only an overlay on top of the image. So it does not affect the backend image itself, but it does mean that it’s not securing the image. If I remove some data or try to comment something out or highlight it in black, that does not mean when I send it to someone else, they can’t see it. They can show and hide it. So it’s not redacting that information as part of it. It’s not a redaction tool.
The file types that are supported are the AI files to show the Adobe Illustrator files, DVGs, EPUBs—primarily PDF is where you’re going to see the annotation work as part of this. And again, as I said, it does work with view permissions, and it does require Pay-As-You-Go licensing to set up. But as Vlad said, there is no cost to use this. So once I’ve enabled Pay-As-You-Go—which we have another video in the series that supports—if you have questions on how to set that up, please refer to that. Go back to that video in the series. But once it’s set up, there is no cost to use annotations. It’s a service provided as part of the Pay-As-You-Go services at no cost.
Awesome. And like Drew said, setting up Pay-As-You-Go is something that will take you just a few minutes, and we have a dedicated video on that. So if you want this in your tenant in the next 10 minutes, go check out that video—it’ll be in the description below.
And I think this is it for this video. It’s been short and sweet. Drew, thank you so much for covering this feature—amazing presentation as always. And for those of you watching, if you have enjoyed this video, make sure to check out the other videos in the series. You’ll have a link to the playlist appearing on the screen right now. And if you want to connect with Drew, follow his blog, his LinkedIn—you’ll have all those links in the description below.
Thank you so much, Drew, for participating today.
Thank you, Vlad.
