How to edit text in a PDF file (free!)

User question

Hello.

Please tell me a working way to edit a PDF file. I need to correct some text in it, but I can't.

In Word, the file does not open (more precisely, when you try to open it, hieroglyphs appear), I downloaded a bunch of programs: but everywhere they ask to pay for the purchase (with all this, it’s not clear, after payment, will I be able to edit my own document?).

Is there a working free way?

Good day!

Yes, there was a certain difficulty with editing PDF files (and, probably, it will be for a long time 😉). Especially when it comes to very large files (when opened on weak machines, they just freeze ...).

In general, in this article I will offer a fairly simple and effective way to edit PDF (suitable for the vast majority of files).

Note: I deliberately do not include any online services in this article (because quite often PDF documents contain confidential and private information that is highly undesirable to show to strangers!).

Editing a PDF file: instruction

What is required

1) The file (in PDF format) to be edited. If you are faced with such a problem, then you probably have it ✌ ...

2) Office suite Libbre Office.

Link to the official website: //ru.libreoffice.org/

It is a free and very powerful office suite. It surpasses Microsoft Office in some of its features and functions! In particular, if we talk about our topic, in its arsenal there is a program Draw, capable of easily and quickly editing most PDFs (even those that refuse to open Word)!

In general, I recommend having this package on your work computer / laptop (you never know?).

👉 Another important point!

PDF files can be different (I now mean not the number of sheets or topics, but the structure of the file ...). There are PDF files with text, there are scanned sheets or photographs (in fact, they are a collection of pictures arranged in order).

So, you can edit only the first type of files (i.e. text)! If you have the second type, then you first need to translate it into a text version (this operation is called recognition , for this, specials are used. programs). More details about this here: //ocomp.info/kak-otskanirovat-dokument.html#i-4

PDF file structure

Editing example

1) And so, we will assume that the Libre Office package is installed and running (the installation of the package is standard, so I do not consider it. By the way, when installing, select full package (not stripped down)).

And so, the first action: click on the link "Open file" in the menu on the left. See example below.

Open file - Libre Office

2) Next, specify your file (as a rule, in 2-3 seconds the file will be imported into the Draw program and automatically opened). Please note that after opening the document, you can immediately put cursor to the right place and edit text.

Note: I took a file with a table specifically for the example (as a rule, they are more difficult to edit than just text).

Screen of work with LibreOffice Draw

The document was opened in Libre Office Draw

3) If you need not only to edit some block of text, but also add another one, then:

click on the insert text icon (or key F2, number 1, see the screen below);
set the text area in the desired place and type the required text (2);
on the right side (in the menu) click on the key icon , and set the desired font size, underline, highlight, etc.

We start editing a line in the table (example) / Clickable (large screen)

4) To clearly show how I changed the text, I decided to place two sections of the document on one screen (see example below). Moreover, I also highlighted the added text "Ocomp.info" in yellow, so that it is striking ...

The line in the table has been edited!

5) After you finish editing the document, go to the menu "File" and select "Export to PDF" ... So to speak, where did we start, we go there ...

Note: besides PDF, the document can be saved in other formats: GIF, ODF, HTML, TIFF, etc.

File - Export to PDF / Libre Office Draw

Further, in most cases, it is enough to immediately click on the button "Export" (without changing any settings). After that, you just have to give a name to the file and specify the folder where it will be saved.

Export (settings can be left unchanged in most cases)

6) As a test, I opened the resulting file in Adobe Reader: the document looked the same as before, only one part of it was highlighted in "yellow" (which I edited, see the example below).

The resulting file was opened in Adobe Reader

In general, the problem was solved ...

Alternative option

If you have a simple text document in PDF (without any tables, pictures, diagrams), then in most cases regular Word will also "cope" with it (which, moreover, is installed by most users, unlike the same Libre Office).

Note: some users, by the way, do not realize that Word is able to open many PDF files and even allow them to be saved in DOC / DOCX format.

How to edit PDF file in Word (relevant for Word 2016, 2019):

1) first, find the desired PDF file and open it in Word (see example below).

Open PDF file in Word

2) Next, accept the warning from Word (that it is going to convert your PDF). Note that large PDF files can take a significant amount of time (especially if your PC is not good at performance).

Word app converts your PDF

3) After, you can start editing. As an example, I formatted the text and added a note about the site address (example in the screenshot below).

I note that Word opens some files "very badly": all the markup leaves, the text is displaced, instead of plates there are some stripes. Therefore, the method is relevant only for "simple" documents.