How to create page with non printing annotation

Question

I would like to add text 'This page intentionally left blank' to blank page (with header) but I would like to this text appear in pdf but not in the printed document. Is it even possible? If so, how?

Answer 1

The pdfcomment package allows you to add PDF annotations to the document which are usually not printed, except if explicitly requested. Looking at the manual I come up with this example which adds a white page behind the title page to make sure the next content is starting at an odd page.

\documentclass[twoside]{book}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{pdfcomment}
\title{Test}\author{Tester}

% Not sure if this is right, but by default comments should not be printed anyway
%\pdfliteral{%
%    /printCommentPopups [/b false]
%}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\clearpage
\pdffreetextcomment[subject={overlay},height=2.2cm,width=4.8cm,voffset=-2.8cm,hoffset=1.5cm,opacity=1.0,justification=right,type=typewriter,font=Jokerman,fontsize=13pt,fontcolor=black]
    {This page was left intensionally blank.}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\cleardoublepage

\blindtext

\end{document} 

Answer 2

This sort of thing is normally accomplished by adding a switch at the top of the preamble (See How to make a switch for print vs. display versions of a document with respect to links/URLs).

Personally I don't like "this page intentionally left blank pages". For starters once the sentence is typeset the page is not blank anymore and it really underestimates the intelligence of readers.

So, I would rather have an epigraph or epigraphs, but modify the code to suit:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{epigraph,lipsum}
\makeatletter
\newif\if@print
\@printtrue
\def\cleardoublepage{%
  \clearpage
  \if@twoside\ifodd\c@page\else
    \if@print
    \hbox{}
    \vspace*{\fill}
    \begin{center}
       \blankpagetext@cx      
    \end{center}
    \vspace{\fill}
    \fi
    \thispagestyle{empty}
    \newpage
    \if@twocolumn\hbox{}\newpage
    \fi
\fi\fi}
\def\blankpagetext@cx{\epigraph{We all agree that your theory is crazy. 
          But is it crazy enough?}{Niels Bohr}}

\begin{document}
\mainmatter
\chapter{Test}
\lipsum[1]
\chapter{Second}
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}

The switch is a simple \if@print.