How can you edit a PDF file?

[raccoon]

Looks like you have to have special software for it. Can anybody recommend some that they've used?

[Shardik]

1. You may not be able to.

One of the purposes of saving a document as a PDF is to leave it uneditable. BUT, if the originator of the document did not lock it you could use Adobe Acrobat.

Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong here but that's the way I see it.

You can also get a free version to save in PDF through Open Office which is an open source version of MS Office.

[hobbit709]

2. There's some apps that let you make changes

but you can only print them, not save the changes. To edit a PDF you need Adobe Acrobat-the full version, not the free reader.

[hunter]

3. PDF was meant to be a kind of electronic paper, and not something you could edit.

Nevertheless, it can be done (more or less) depending upon the internal structure of the document.

There's Adobe's software which is pricey and honors all the locks the document's creators put into it and all the mysteries Adobe seeks to maintain.

Then there are the less pricey alternatives --

http://www.nitropdf.com and http://www.foxitsoftware.com

$99.00 will get you something better than a razor blade and a jar of paste.

After that you are doing surgery on your document in the jungle with a machete and a ball of twine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDFedit

If someone knows better, I'd like to know too.

[RoyGBiv]

4. That pretty much covers it ...

I'd just add that Acrobat has a learning curve and is not straightforward with the editing process.

I had a very simple document I needed to edit to update a logo, and being at work, we had Acrobat. I gave up on it and found it easier just to recreate the whole thing in Word and add the new logo. If I had more experience with Acrobat it may have been easier using that, but what all I had to do wasn't intuitive. Being an old hacker, figuring out how software works is something intrinsic to me, but this mess beat me.

[canetoad]

5. I use Acrobat a lot

and it's still a slow and clunky pain in the neck to edit anything. OK for one or two letter typos but you are right, often easier to re-do the document.

[FormerDittoHead]

7. I can recommend NitroPDF as a PDF editor / creator.

NitroPDF Pro is very nice, although it doesn't do EVERYTHING I'd really like it to (the PDF to RTF is dicey at best, and working with PDF's, I'd like to be able to "select all" text and change the font, etc.) But overall it's a LOT cheaper than Adobe's product.

I've edited plenty of PDFs with it, however, some are password protected from editing...

[LiberalFighter]

6. 1) Get the original file

or

2) Highlight, copy and paste

[paparush]

8. You would have to buy, or otherwise obtain, a full copy of Adobe Acrobat that includes

Adobe Designer.

Designer will allow you to add/move form fields, texboxes, edit text, etc.

[Old and In the Way]

9. Here's a site that might be useful-

http://convertpdftoword.net/

If you want to modify a .pdf locally, I use the snapshot tool and paste it into MS Paint. When I'm done modifying it, you can print it as a .pdf if you have that utility on your PC.

[HamdenRice]

10. WordPerfect X3 allows you to edit PDF documents

but by converting it to a Word Perfect document. I think, however, it's basically using a kind of OCR (optical character recognition) not Acrobat. But if it's a very plain doc, it works pretty well, and then WordPerfect allows you to convert any WordPerfect doc to a pdf.

Yet another reason WordPerfect remains far superior to MS Word.

WordPerfect is about $100 IIRC, but its a wonderful wordprocessor.