Edit PDFs using free software and online tools
Roland Waddilove explains how you can use free online tools to edit and annotate PDF files
Adobe invented the PDF (Portable Document Format) to solve a problem that dogged people for years: how to view and print documents without the original software or fonts. It wasn’t meant to be a replacement for a word processor – it was a layout format for precise alignment of text and images.
It launched the Acrobat software which packaged documents into special PDF files. Adobe then made Acrobat Reader (now known as Adobe Reader DC) free to download and use so people could open, read and print the files.
In 2008, the company made the PDF file format an open standard and since then there has been an explosion of PDF-related software. Many programs can save documents in PDF format, but few can edit them directly.
So what happens if you receive a document in PDF form and need to change it? Or you might save a file as a PDF but lose the original (editable) document through a disk or human error? In all of these situations you need a PDF editor.
However, here’s the thing: free PDF editors generally don’t allow you to edit text. What they offer is the ability to erase (or ‘whiteout’) text and replace it with new copy. Matching the font, both size and colour, is tricky, but it’s all you’ll be able to do if you can’t get hold of the original file which was used to create the PDF.
Some free PDF editors let you annotate PDFs and add or remove pages. The original content cannot be changed, but you can insert notes and comments, use a highlighter pen, strike through text, delete pages, fill out forms, and so on.
Free software
AbleWord (tinyurl.com/h2urup8) is the only free PDF editor we’re aware of that will import a PDF and make it completely editable. It’s best when importing PDF files that were created in Word, but will attempt to replicate all PDF files. The end result won’t look identical to the original, but will be close. Foxit Reader (foxitsoftware.com) is a lightweight alternative to Adobe Reader and many people prefer it. It’s more than just a PDF reader though, and it has a wide range of powerful tools. You can’t edit the contents, but text can be struck through with a line and replaced by a pop-up note. You can also insert sticky notes, attach files to pages, click anywhere and add text, add text boxes and callouts, draw with a pencil, add rectangles, lines, arrows, polygons and clouds, and add stamps like Approved, Rejected, Draft, and so on. It’s great if you have to comment and annotate PDFs. PDF-XChange Viewer (tracker-software.com) offers an almost identical set of features to Foxit Reader and it is useful for annotating PDFs in a similar manner. PDFCool Free Studio is buggy and can quit with an error message, but when it works, it has some useful features. For example, it can extract the text and images from a PDF and this would enable you to edit them elsewhere, such as in a Word document. Text can be typed onto the page and there are some basic drawing functions like lines, circles and rectangles. It’s not as good as Foxit Reader, though.
LibreOffice (libreoffice.org), pictured, the free Office alternative, is worth considering if you want to edit the text in a PDF file. It loads PDFs and it can cope with very large documents with hundreds of pages. The only snag is that each line of text is a text box, which makes it awkward to edit text large amounts of text.