Edit a PDF
Change the words on a page and fill in form fields without converting the document to something else first. Useful for the small corrections that do not justify a round trip through Word — a wrong date, a changed price, a name spelt wrong.
Free, no account, and your file is never uploaded.
How to edit a PDF
- 1Choose the PDF you want to change.
- 2Click the text you want to edit and type over it, or fill in the form fields.
- 3Download the edited PDF.
Worth knowing
- The file never leaves your computer. Every one of these tools runs inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no copy on a server, nothing to delete afterwards and no queue of other people’s documents next to yours.
- Good for corrections, not for redesign. Editing text in place works well when you are replacing words with words of a similar length. Rewriting a paragraph so it needs to reflow across pages is a job for PDF to Word instead.
- The original font is reused where it can be. If the font is embedded in the document, the replacement text is set in it so the correction does not stand out. Where a font is not embedded, the closest available match is used.
- Scanned pages are read first. A photographed or scanned page has no text layer, so the editor offers OCR for it: the text is read in your browser (English and Arabic) and then becomes editable like any other line.
When to use it
- Correcting a wrong date, price or name in a PDF you received.
- Filling in a PDF form on your computer instead of printing it.
- Making a small change to a scanned letter after its text has been read with OCR.
Questions
- Can I edit a scanned PDF?
- Yes, once its text has been read. When a page has no text layer, the editor offers OCR, which reads English and Arabic text inside your browser. The first run downloads the reading engine (about 8 MB); after that it is cached.
- Will the edited text match the original font?
- Where the font is embedded in the PDF, the replacement text uses it. Otherwise the closest available match is used.
- Can I rewrite whole paragraphs?
- It is best for corrections of similar length. For longer rewrites that need text to reflow, convert the PDF to Word.
Read the guide
- Scanned PDF vs searchable PDF: how to tell, and how to make a scan searchable
If you cannot select or search the words in a PDF, it is probably a picture of a page. OCR reads the picture and adds an invisible text layer on top, so the page looks the same but can be searched and copied.
- How to fill in a PDF form, whether it has fields or not
A fillable PDF has real fields you click and type into. A flat PDF is only a picture of a form, so you place text on top of it. The steps are different, so find out which one you have first.
Related PDF tools
They are all in the PDF workspace, and the rest of the free tools — invoices, QR codes, scanned-PDF enhancement and file compression — need no account either.