Whether you’ve downloaded forms for a company, legal paperwork, or a book, you’ve likely encountered the PDF file format at some point. This also means that you’re intimately familiar with the frustration of needing to edit the file but not having an easy way to do so.
The greatest irony of the PDF, or Portable Document Format, is that, despite its name, it’s not very user friendly. Despite years of advancements, PDFs remain stubbornly difficult to edit in anything other than the program that created them. So, what’s the easiest way to edit a PDF file? Our guide will illustrate some possibilities for you.
Not sure how to edit a PDF? One of the easiest solutions is not to edit a PDF file at all.
Confused?
Simply put, since PDFs are notoriously incompatible with most editing software, and the best you’ll be able to do is form-filling, a common fix for this problem is to convert the PDF to a Microsoft Word, Pages, or OpenOffice document format. Once the file gets converted, you can edit it in your standard word processor at will.
Unsure how to convert pdf to word? There are a number of ways.
First, you can search online for a file conversion website. Either a generic one or one specifically designed for PDF to other document format conversion. Alternatively, you could download a conversion program or an app to your computer or phone to handle that process for you. Once the PDF is in a more readable format, then you may edit it as you please.
Of course, the easiest way to edit a PDF is in the program which likely originated it. That program typically being Adobe Acrobat. If you have the money to spend on Acrobat, then it will be your best bet for editing a PDF file with little to no trouble.
If you have Acrobat, then all you need to do to edit your PDF file is:
Of course, not everyone has the luxury of using Acrobat. So, what do you do then?
A quick Google search for “PDF editor” will reveal several options for editing PDF files, both downloadable and online-only. Tom’s Guide has a list of some of the best downloadable options on the market today if that’s your speed.
However, if you’d rather not download something third-party, or would rather not have to pay anything out of pocket, an online editor might be the way to go. Sites like Sejda, PDFSam Basic, and SmallPDF all come highly recommended by users.
The only thing you should bear in mind is that online or third-party programs may not offer the full functionality you need. Check to see what degree of edits each of these programs or sites allows before you use them.
Some more recent word processors have the option to convert PDFs into editable formats built-in. We’ll discuss how to do this in two different ones below:
If you have Microsoft Word 2013 or newer, you have a built-in means of editing PDF documents. Or, rather, editing a document based on the original PDF. Since the two formats differ, spacing, form lines, or tables might end up lost or scrambled in the translation.
However, if you want to save time on a simple edit, and you have Word, all you need to do is:
Yet another of the many reasons to use Google Docs is its ability to edit PDFs. The process to edit a PDF in Google Docs is a touch more complex, but still relatively straightforward. If you want to edit your PDF file in Google Docs, you need to:
As we established above, the easiest way to edit a PDF would be to use Acrobat or the program in which the file got created. However, there are plenty of other options available if you look around. Whether you convert the file, use a word processor, use a website, or use Acrobat, you’ll be able to edit the PDF you need.
If you liked this helpful how-to and want to stay up to date on the latest in technology and other news, feel free to browse our blog for more articles like this one!
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