Overleaf Comment Extractor

A Firefox add-on designed to streamline collaborative academic writing by easily extracting and organizing comments from Overleaf projects.

Firefox Add-ons Product Page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/overleaf-comment-exporter/

Managing feedback across multi-author manuscripts can be a high-friction process. Developed within the Autotelic Interaction Research Group at Aalto University, this tool emerged from the practical need to simplify complex writing workflows in our own research on self-directed behavior. In Overleaf, the highlighted text referenced by a comment is often lost during edits, so it is helpful to be able to return to a spreadsheet snapshot of the original highlights. We've also found that moving comments to a spreadsheet allows us to more easily organize the work to address them. By reducing the administrative overhead of addressing co-author feedback, this extension allows researchers to focus more on communicating their science and less on worrying about lost comments.

How to Use

The recommended way to install is to visit the Firefox Add-ons Product Page and click "Add to Firefox". From there, navigate to your Overleaf document and open the review panel. Find the extension in your Firefox Extensions menu to open the pop-up interface. Choose your desired output format (CSV or XSLX) to download.

Developer Notes

What’s Here

• extension/: the Firefox-compatible browser extension.
• samples/: sample Overleaf exports and reference CSVs for comparison.

Build From Source

cd extension
npm install
npm run build

Package For addons.mozilla.org (AMO)

cd extension
npm install
npm run package

The packaged artifact is written to extension/web-ext-artifacts/.

Optional pre-submit checks:

cd extension
npm run validate:release

AMO submission checklist: AMO_RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md.

Load The Extension

1. Open Firefox and go to about:debugging.
2. Choose This Firefox and click Load Temporary Add-on.
3. Select extension/manifest.json.
4. Reload Overleaf after the extension is loaded.

Export Flow

1. Open an Overleaf project with review comments.
2. Use the extension popup to start an export.
3. Download the generated CSV and compare it with the reference files in samples/ when needed.

Notes

• Build artifacts in extension/dist/ are generated and should not be edited by hand.
• Generated CSV outputs are intentionally kept out of version control.
• Privacy policy for AMO submission: PRIVACY.md.

Acknowledgments & Funding

This software is maintained by the Autotelic Interaction Research Group and its development is generously supported by the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT).

Citation

If you use this tool to assist in your academic writing or research workflow, please consider citing it:

Ady, Nadia M. (2026). Overleaf Comment Extractor (Version 0.1.0) [Browser Extension]. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.20513057

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.