How to Edit a PDF

PDFs are tricky to edit without the right tools. While some of them are pricey, a few
free ones can get the job done, too. Here is what you need to get—and know.

(Credit: H12/[Link])

If you have ever tried to edit a Portable Document Format file, or PDF, you have almost
certainly discovered that it is a lot more trouble than editing a Microsoft Word or Google doc.
That is because PDFs were never designed to be edited at all. When Adobe introduced the
PDF spec back in 1993, the whole idea was that it would be a virtual print-out, the on-screen
equivalent of hard copy. Like any printed document, it was not intended to be changed.

It did not take long before people wanted to correct typos, replace old product logos with new
ones, and even change fonts and layouts in their PDFs. Thus, productivity software makers
started providing PDF editing tools. Even with these tools, you still cannot edit a PDF with the
same ease and flexibility as a word-processing document, and you probably never will. Do
not worry, though. You can edit PDFs, and we will tell you how.

But first, it helps to understand the challenges you are up against.

Why Are PDFs So Hard to Edit?

As a format, the PDF was devised before people used web browsers, and as mentioned, it is
based on the idea of a printed page. That means you cannot add a few lines of text in the
middle of a page one, for example, and make the remaining text flow smoothly into page two,
as you can in a DOC or DOCX. Instead, to cram new text onto a PDF, you need to resize the
fonts on page one or change the size of the box that contains the text. I have some tips for
that in a later section, but do not expect perfect results.

While many apps call themselves PDF editors, they can't actually edit the text and graphics
in a PDF file. They only let you add comments to the PDF file—either boxed sticky notes or
lines and text boxes that appear on a layer above the PDF's actual contents. When you add
a comment to a PDF, it's akin to putting a piece of paper under a pane of glass and writing
comments on the glass. A comment doesn’t make a permanent change to the text, such as
removing sensitive data, and anyone using a free PDF viewer like Adobe Acrobat Reader or
the Preview on macOS can change or remove the comments you make. With that in mind, I
share a roundabout way to bake comments permanently into a PDF file at the end of this
article.

A true PDF editor lets you change, move, delete, and add actual content to the PDF, in a
way that will not let anyone else change your edits unless they also use a true PDF editor.
You can use a high-priced one like Adobe Acrobat ($12.99 per month) or Adobe Acrobat
Pro ($19.99 per month), with unique features for matching fonts on scanned images but
some notable limitations. Alternatively, consider ABBYY FineReader PDF ($99 per year),
or Nitro Pro ($11.99 month).

For many purposes, you can get good results from less expensive editors such as these four:

 EaseUS PDF Editor (Windows, $79.95 for a perpetual license, or $19.47 per month)

 PDF-Xchange Editor (Windows, $56)

 The unfortunately named SwifDoo PDF (Windows, $129 for a perpetual license or $14

per month)

 Wondershare PDFelement (macOS and Windows, $159 for a perpetual license, or

$129 per year)

The basic techniques are the same in all PDF editors.

You can also find plenty of web sites that let you upload your PDFs and edit them in your
browser without paying anything—but beware. I am not ready to upload my documents to
web sites that I know nothing about and that mysteriously offer free services in exchange for
harvesting my data.

Editing a PDF With High-Priced Tools

Keep in mind that whichever PDF editor you choose, you always face inherent limits. For
example, the text in a PDF is typically contained in blocks that enclose one or more
paragraphs. If you add extra lines of text to a block, the block below the current block will not
move down to create room for the added text. In a word processor, when you add lines to a
paragraph, the rest of the document moves down. In a PDF, the added lines overlap with the
text of the paragraph below it, forcing you to move the next paragraph down on the page if
you have room for it, or remove text from it to make room for the added text.

Adobe Acrobat has a spacious interface with fine-tuned controls for editing text and images.
Open the PDF that you want to edit, and choose Edit from the Tools menu—unless you're
using Acrobat’s classic interface, in which case choose Edit from the top line menu. Blue
boxes appear around each PDF element on the current page, both text and graphics. To
correct an error in the text, simply click in the text box and start typing. Below is an example
of using Acrobat DC to change the text in a header.
(Credit: Adobe Acrobat/PCMag)

Similarly, in ABBYY FineReader PDF, choose Edit Content from the menu, click in the PDF
and start typing. And in Nitro PDF, choose Edit from the ribbon, click in the PDF, and start
typing.

Cheaper PDF Editing Tools

With the PDF open in the app, click Edit in the Home toolbar, then select the kind of content
you want to edit, whether all the content on the page, text, images, or shapes.

Below is an example of what it looks like to replace or modify images in a PDF using PDF-
XChange Editor.
(Credit: PDF-XChange/PCMag)

Simply click on the text and make your changes. From the gear icon at the bottom left, you
can select Properties Pane to get a menu with options for fonts and paragraph alignment, but
you will not find the unique fine-tuning controls that Acrobat has.

The Problem With Cheap PDF Editing Tools: Fonts

One subtle problem with this kind of editing involves fonts. If the font used in the original PDF
is not also installed on your system, the PDF editor may use a different font when you insert
or change text. Acrobat and Nitro Pro are smart enough to use a similar font, but a sharp-
eyed reader will see the difference, perhaps picking up on the fact that you changed the
original PDF.

Most other PDF editors do a worse job of font-matching, and many don't bother even trying
to match the surrounding font when inserting text. The only app I found that did a perfect job
of font-matching was the macOS (and iOS) PDF Expert ($79.99 per year). When I inserted
text in a PDF, the app used the font already embedded in the PDF file so the result looks
seamless and it's impossible to detect my changes.

The only Windows-based PDF editors I have found that come close are EaseUS PDF Editor,
PDFelement, and SwifDoo PDF. Like PDF Expert, these apps try to use the font already
embedded in the PDF when you change or insert text. But in one PDF that I tested, when I
tried to insert text between ordinary lower-case words, all three apps formatted the added
text in small capitals and didn't provide menu options to let me choose lower-case instead.
Probably all three internally use the same PDF processing software, though I could not find
any clue to its source. The small-caps problem could have been worse. For example, when I
tried adding text to the same file in PDF Studio 2024, it converted the entire page to small
caps. You may need to experiment to find the app that works best for you.

Formatting Your PDFs

No matter which PDF editor you use, do not expect the same ease of use you get with a
word processor. Some PDF-editing apps claim to let you edit as smoothly as you can in
Microsoft Word. It is simply not true. (You need to convert your PDF to a word processing
file to truly edit it anew—more on that in a moment.)

If you add a word or two that makes the current paragraph longer by one line, the paragraph
will probably overlap the next paragraph, and you will have to move the paragraph below the
one you are working on. There may not be enough room on the page to fit your changes.
When you edit a line in a justified (full-width) paragraph, the text is likely to lurch to the left,
leaving a blank space between the end of the line and the right margin. You can fix this by
right-clicking on the line, choosing Paragraph from the pop-up menu, and setting the
alignment to Justify.

Inserting a quotation mark can also cause formatting troubles. As far as I can tell, no PDF
editor knows how to insert smart quotes (also known as curly quotes, or slanted typographic
quotation marks) the way all word processors do, so the PDF editors insert straight,
typewriter-style quote marks instead. To get smart quotes, you need to copy and paste a
quotation mark in the style you want from elsewhere in the same PDF or from another
source, such as the web or a Word document.

In any full-featured PDF editing app, you can resize text boxes and make the text reflow to
match the new size, but remember that you cannot make text reflow from one page to the
next. If you try to continue typing from the last line on a page, you will only increase the size
of the box that contains the text. When you need to make large-scale changes in a PDF file,
the best solution is to convert it to a word-processing document. The easiest way is to import
the PDF into Microsoft Word or any other advanced word processor, make your edits, and
then export the edited document as a new PDF. This method works only with certain kinds of
PDFs, however, and the formatting will not be exactly the same as the original document. But
it may be close enough.

Advanced PDF Editing Features

Adobe Acrobat DC has the most advanced PDF editing on the planet. Like all PDF editors,
Acrobat works well with PDFs created by apps like Word and Excel. Further, when you add
or edit text on a PDF, PDF editors can match the font of the surrounding text, since that font
is installed on your system.

Acrobat, however, performs one amazing feat that no other app even approaches. If you use
it to edit an image scanned from an old book or magazine that used a hot-metal font that has
not existed for a hundred years, Acrobat lets you edit the text in the scanned image using
that same ancient font. It does this trick by performing an optical character recognition
process on the image and constructing a font from the characters it finds. When you edit the
text in the PDF, Acrobat uses this newly constructed font to match the surrounding text. In
the image below, we are adding the "A" to the heading "A Tea Party." Acrobat uses the same
letter "A" that appears elsewhere in the header. Acrobat’s font-building isn’t always perfect,
and sometimes it mixes two different-sized letters in the same words, but when it works,
there’s nothing remotely like it.

(Credit: Adobe Acrobat/PCMag)

Edit PDFs for Free

Now let us cover how to make permanent changes to a PDF using only free tools such as
Windows’ Microsoft Edge and Apple's macOS Preview. You cannot modify text or replace
graphics with them, but you can add text boxes, highlights, lines, and arrows, as well as
apply similar markup.

Under an up-to-date Windows, all you need is the built-in Microsoft Edge, which lets you add
comments to a PDF (among some other neat tricks it can do). When you’ve marked up your
PDF, print it to the built-in Print to PDF printer driver. The resulting PDF is searchable and
has the comments baked in.

On macOS, open the PDF in Preview and make all your comments. From the Print menu,
click the PDF button, and then Save as PDF. The resulting PDF is searchable, and the
comments are baked in and visible in any PDF viewer.

Only two or three years ago, the built-in tools in Windows and macOS either couldn’t
accomplish these tasks or required complicated workarounds, but times and operating
systems have changed—and, in this case, changed for the better.