EDIT has become a widely used term in the IT field and means publish, print but also “take care from an editorial point of view “. And it is precisely this last meaning that is the most correct when we look for a way to EDIT a PDF. We have already seen how edit PDF on Windows PC or Mac computer from every point of view: textual, images, links, and so on. Below we want to focus on the use of PDFelement to edit a PDF and make it just how we want it.
What is PDFelement?
PDF documents are normally considered “read only”. PDFelement is a professional software for Windows and MacOS that allows you to edit the text of a PDF, mark the document by highlighting, draw and write notes and notes on the PDF, create PDF forms and even reorder pages. With the help of a scanner it will also help you create PDFs from paper documents.
Here are the main advantages of the app:
- Edit and correct text within PDF documents
- Highlight text, insert shapes and drawings into PDF.
- Create searchable PDFs from paper documents
- Create PDF forms
- Convert PDF to other document types, including Word, Excel, and Pages.
- Protects the PDF with a password, inserting a digital signature, etc…
Download PDFelement for PC and macOS, in free DEMO version from the following links:
PDFelement main interface you will see after installation:
Below we will focus on the functionality that allows you to EDIT a PDF.
What does Editing a PDF mean?
Edit a PDF means making changes to the content of an existing PDF file. PDF files are known for their ability to retain the formatting and structure of the original document, making them ideal for sharing and viewing across different platforms. However, sometimes you may need to make changes to a PDF for various reasons, such as text corrections, adding or removing images, or annotations.
Here are some of the common editing operations you can perform on a PDF:
- Editing text: You can correct spelling errors, grammatical errors, or update existing text within a PDF.
- Adding text: You can insert new blocks of text or annotations directly into the PDF document.
- Removing Text: You can delete unnecessary or unwanted text.
- Adding images: You can insert new images or graphics into the PDF.
- Deleting images: You can remove existing images or graphics.
- Annotations: You can add annotations such as notes, highlights, underlines, or arrows to highlight specific parts of the document.
- Adding signatures: If necessary, you can add a digital signature to a PDF.
- Rearranging pages: You can move, copy or delete pages within the PDF
How to Edit a PDF File for Free
Editing PDFs is not trivial to do and many of us don’t have the right tools to do it. Even with a good PDF editor, making changes typically has a different level of difficulty than, say, editing a Word document.
PDFelement aims to change this approach and apparently succeeded because editing a PDF with PDFelement is almost identical to editing a Word document. In fact, it must be said that with PDFelement it is not necessary edit line by line like other PDF Editors do. The text is organized in boxes and it’s intelligently separated into text boxes where you can add, delete, or edit words much as you would in Microsoft Word.
In the following image you can better understand this mode of operation: once you select a part of the PDF page with the mouse and access the section EDIT, the program will be ready to modify every part of that section. You can select text, highlight it, delete it, change size and font, underline it, and much more.
In addition to editing text, you can add and resize text Images and add headers and footers. The interface is very similar to that of Microsoft Word, so it should be simple for anyone to use.
Mark up a PDF it is useful for inserting corrections or highlighting certain parts of the PDF. To do these operations just click on the section ANNOTATION and you’ll see a number of intuitive tools to use. You will be able to highlight text, insert boxes, arrows, underline text, add notes, etc… In the following figure some examples of annotations that you can make:
As you can see, with PDFelement editing a PDF is a simple and intuitive thing to do. But with this program, in addition to editing a PDF you can do many other operations. For example, here is what you can do:
> Digitize paper documents into PDF: thanks to the optical character recognition (OCR) present in PDFelement you will be able to make scanned PDF files editable again. The standard version of the app does not perform OCR. For this, you will definitely need the Professional version.
> Hiding/Obscuring PDF contents: If you need to share documents with personal information then it is very likely that you will use the “Redaction” function. This is a function that permanently obscures some parts of the PDF. To apply redaction in PDFelement, first click on the icon Protect, and then select the text or images you want to hide. Finally click Apply redaction.
> Create PDF Forms: PDF forms are a common way to collect information via PDF documents as well. In this article we have already seen how to create fillable forms with PDFelement starting from ready-made forms.
> Edit and reorder PDF pages: if you need to change the order of PDF pages, change their orientation or delete/replace some pages, you will have no problems with PDFelement. Just access the PAGES section and you will be able to carry out all these operations in a simple and banal way. In this regard, read how to edit PDF pages
> Convert PDF to other formats: another function present in PDFelement is that of “conversion” from PDF to other formats such as word, excel, powerpoint, images, text. The conversion occurs without loss of quality and without changing the layout of the document.
> Protect PDF: The PROTECT section of PDFelement allows you to protect your PDF document by entering a password protection or signature. With the password you can protect your PDF from copying, editing and printing.
Edit a scanned PDF
If you have a scanned PDF in your hands, you will have noticed that the text inside is not selectable. This makes editing and editing work more complex. However, thanks to professional tools such as PDFelement and integrated OCR technology (optical character recognition technology), even these scanned PDF files can be made “editable”. For more information on how to work with this type of PDF, we invite you to read the following article that we wrote some time ago:
Editing a Scanned Document
