PDFs aren't really built to be edited. A Word file knows it has paragraphs. A PDF mostly knows that certain characters sit at certain coordinates on a page, which is why fixing one typo can feel harder than it should.
For small changes (a date, a name, a figure in a table, a line you forgot to add) you don't need the original document. Edit PDF lets you click on a piece of text and retype it, and add new text, images and shapes anywhere on the page. For anything bigger, you're better off going back to the source file, and the reasons are below.
Why PDF text is awkward to change
When Word or Google Docs exports a PDF, the paragraphs are turned into drawing instructions: put these glyphs, in this font, at this position. There's no paragraph left for text to reflow in. Change a short word to a long one and nothing moves out of the way, because nothing in the file knows it should.
The text is also stored in pieces. One line might be a single chunk or several, depending on the app that made the PDF. And fonts are usually embedded as subsets, meaning only the characters the document already uses are in the file. The letter you want to type may simply not be there.
So every PDF editor that "edits text" does a version of the same trick. It hides the old text and draws new text in its place. Editors differ in how well they hide it and how closely the new text matches.
Changing existing text with Edit PDF
Open Edit PDF and add your file. It's opened and edited in your browser, so the document isn't uploaded anywhere.
- Click "Text" in the toolbar.
- Move the pointer over the page. Text you can change gets a dashed blue outline.
- Click the piece you want to change. It turns into an editable box with the current words in it.
- Type your change, then press Enter or click somewhere else to keep it. Esc cancels.
- When all your edits are done, click "Download" to save the PDF.
If you clear the box completely, the original words disappear and nothing replaces them.
For the same change in many places (a company name, a misspelt surname, last year's date), open "Find and replace" instead of clicking each one. Type what to look for, put the new wording in "Replace with", then use "Replace" to step through the matches or "Replace all" to change every one. Tick "Match case" if capitals matter.
Adding new text, images and shapes
Most PDF editing is really adding things, and that part works best.
New text
With Text selected, click an empty part of the page and type. The floating bar has font family, size, bold, italic, underline, text colour and alignment. There are about 30 fonts, from Arial and Times New Roman to Roboto, Open Sans and a couple of Arabic ones. Added text is real text in the PDF, so it can be searched and copied later.
Images
Open the "Images" menu and choose "New image". Any picture your browser can open works (JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP), and each is converted to PNG on the way in. That keeps logos crisp, but a big phone photo can add several megabytes, so shrink it first or run Compress PDF afterwards. The image lands on the current page for you to drag, resize, rotate and fade with the opacity setting.
Tick "Repeat on all pages" before adding it if it's a logo or letterhead that should sit in the same spot on every page. Pictures you add are kept in a saved list on that device, so your logo is one click away next time.
Shapes
The "Shapes" menu has "Ellipse", "Rectangle", "Line" and "Arrow". Drag on the page to draw one, then set the border colour and width, and a fill colour (or none) for rectangles and ellipses. A red rectangle and an arrow are good for pointing someone at the box they missed.
What the edited text will look like
This is the limit to know before you start. When you change existing text, the new words are drawn in a plain sans-serif font, in black, at the size of the original, on one line. Edit PDF doesn't try to reuse the document's own font (which, as above, often isn't fully in the file anyway).
In practice:
- In a document set in Arial or Helvetica, a changed number or name is hard to spot.
- In a serif document, the edited word will look a little different from its neighbours.
- Coloured text, like a blue heading, comes out black.
- The white box behind the new words shows on a coloured background or a greyish scan.
If the match matters, clear the original text (empty the box), then add a new text box in the font, size and colour you want and drag it into position.
Scanned pages are different. A scan is a photo of paper, so there's usually no text to click. Drag a "Whiteout" box over the words and type new text on top.
Covering text isn't removing it
Here's the part that matters for anything sensitive. Editing existing text, "Find and replace" and "Whiteout" all lay a white box over the old text and draw the new text on top. The original characters are still in the file underneath. Anyone can select and copy them, or open the PDF in another editor and move the box.
For a typo, that's fine. For a salary or an account number, it isn't. If something must be gone, use Redact PDF, which replaces the marked pages with images so the text no longer exists. The guide on redacting a PDF properly explains how.
Images behave differently. "Delete existing image" in the Images menu really removes the picture from the PDF. Click an image to delete it, and click it again to bring it back if you picked the wrong one.
When to edit the original file instead
Edit PDF is good at corrections and additions. It's the wrong tool for rewriting a paragraph, because nothing reflows. Each edited piece is one line, so a longer sentence runs past where the old one ended instead of wrapping.
If you have the Word or Google Docs file the PDF came from, change it there and export again. If you don't, PDF to Word rebuilds the document as editable paragraphs and tables, with some tidying needed afterwards. Converting PDF to Word without wrecking the layout covers what to expect.
Check every edit at 200%
Before you send the file, zoom in on each place you changed. At normal size a white patch on off-white paper or a slightly different font is easy to miss. At 200% it isn't.
Then search the downloaded PDF for the old wording. It will still be found, because it's sitting under the white box. If that bothers you for this document, redact it before it goes anywhere.
Also useful: Redact PDF · PDF to Word
