DogEars

User Guide — Mapsoft DogEars Plugin for Adobe Acrobat

Overview

DogEars is an Adobe Acrobat plug-in that lets you mark PDF pages with a visual “DogEar” fold in the page corner. Marked pages can then be quickly navigated, extracted into a new document, or cleared in bulk. It provides a simple, visual way to flag pages of interest while reviewing a PDF.

DogEar annotations are stored directly in the PDF file, so they persist when the document is saved and shared with other DogEars users.

Getting Started

After installation, DogEars adds a DogEars submenu under Plug-Ins › Mapsoft, two toolbar buttons (DogEar and Next), keyboard shortcuts, and entries in the page's right-click menu.

1. Open a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat.
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+D (or click the DogEar toolbar button, or right-click the page and choose Toggle DogEar on This Page) to mark the current page.
3. A small triangular fold appears in the page corner, indicating the page is marked.
4. Press Ctrl+Alt+N or click the Next toolbar button to jump to the next marked page, and Ctrl+Alt+P for the previous one.
5. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D (or choose Plug-Ins › Mapsoft › DogEars › DogEars...) to open the DogEars dialog, which lists every marked page with a count and lets you go to, remove or extract them.

Finding DogEars

Acrobat has two interfaces, and the DogEars commands live in a different place in each:

• Classic interface: the Plug-Ins menu on the menu bar, then Mapsoft › DogEars. The DogEar and Next buttons also sit on the toolbar.
• New interface (2023 onwards): click the Menu icon at the top left of the window, then Plug-Ins › Mapsoft › DogEars. Plug-in toolbar buttons are listed at the bottom of the All tools panel.

You do not have to go through the menu each time:

• The DogEars palette, a small floating window with DogEar, Prev, Next and List... buttons, appears whenever a document is open. Drag it where you like; it remembers its place. Close it with its X to keep it away, and bring it back with Plug-Ins › Mapsoft › DogEars › DogEars Palette.
• Keyboard shortcuts work in either interface (see the table below).
• Right-click a page and the DogEars commands are at the bottom of the menu.
• Click a DogEar on a page to jump to the next page with a DogEar; hold Shift while clicking to go to the previous one.

Toggling DogEars

Press Ctrl+Alt+D, click the DogEar toolbar button, or right-click the page and choose Toggle DogEar on This Page to add or remove a DogEar on the currently viewed page. If the page already has a DogEar, the command removes it; otherwise, a new DogEar annotation is added.

The DogEar appears as a small triangular fold in the page corner. Its position automatically adjusts to account for page rotation (0°, 90°, 180°, 270°).

Navigating Pages

Next DogEar (Ctrl+Alt+N, the Next toolbar button, or the right-click menu) jumps to the next marked page in the document. When you reach the last marked page, it wraps around to the first marked page.

Previous DogEar (Ctrl+Alt+P, Shift+click on the Next button, or the right-click menu) goes backwards. If you are on the first marked page, it wraps to the last marked page.

The DogEars themselves are clickable: click one to go to the next marked page, or Shift+click to go to the previous one.

To jump straight to a particular marked page, open the DogEars dialog (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D), select the page in the list and click Go To, press Enter, or double-click it. The dialog stays open, so you can step through the marked pages in any order.

Extracting Pages

The Extract button in the DogEars dialog creates a new PDF document containing only the pages with DogEars from the current document. The pages are copied in their original order, and the DogEar annotations are automatically removed from the extracted pages. The dialog closes and the new document becomes the active one.

This is useful for pulling out a subset of pages you have flagged during a review, without modifying the original document.

Removing DogEars

To remove a single DogEar, either press Ctrl+Alt+D (or click the DogEar toolbar button) while viewing that page, or select the page in the DogEars dialog and click Remove (or press Delete).

The Remove All button in the DogEars dialog removes every DogEar annotation from the current document. A confirmation prompt appears before the operation proceeds, since it cannot be undone. The dialog stays open with an empty list.

The DogEars Dialog

Open the DogEars dialog with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D, from Plug-Ins › Mapsoft › DogEars › DogEars..., or from the page's right-click menu. It shows, for the current document:

• A summary line, for example 3 DogEars in this 120-page document.
• A list of every page with a DogEar in page order. The page you are viewing is selected when the dialog opens. If the PDF defines page labels (such as roman-numeral front matter), a Label column shows them beside the page numbers.

The buttons act on the list:

Go To, Remove, Extract and Remove All are disabled while the document has no DogEars.

System Requirements

• Adobe Acrobat: Acrobat Pro or Standard DC (2017 or later). Not compatible with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
• Operating System: Windows 10 or Windows 11 (both 32-bit and 64-bit Acrobat installations are supported).
• Protected Mode: supported. DogEars runs with Acrobat’s Protected Mode switched on and does not require it to be disabled.

Support

If you encounter a problem or have a question not covered here, please get in touch:

• Contact Mapsoft
• Support page

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