When opening a PDF in Yosemite's Preview.app, I can select text using the Text Selection tool from the Markup Toolbar. However, if I don't click directly on the text, a blank text box will appear. For some reason Preview thinks I want to add an annotation everywhere I click even though I have not selected the Text tool.
This is a problem in that it signals an edit to the document, thus changing the modification date and creating an auto-saved version with no meaningful changes.
In previous versions of OS X, I could have solved this problem by using: defaults write com.apple.Preview ApplePersistence -bool no. Yet this does not seem to have an effect in Yosemite.
Any workarounds?
Best Answer
I might state the obvious. When it's the first (accidental) edit you make in a document, Undo/Command-Z will not only remove the involuntary text box, but will also revert the document state back to 'unchanged'.
After test addition: You may have to click on a 'safe' zone outside of the text box for Undo to function. Thus creating additional 'edits', you have to Undo-away. My experience is, that after two or three undos the 'edited' tag disappears behind the filename in the window title.
Just tried it and had one additional observation: The only way I found to get the text box to appear was clicking on or near a line in the pdf. That's a feature not a bug: Preview assumes you want to fill out a form.
Hope this helps.
Eerk