How to Edit a PDF File

Posted on June 17th, 2009 by Marck

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Adobe Corporation’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is considered an industry standard for distributing and exchanging documents. While PDF is a very useful way to have a final soft copy of documents and files for distribution, some people may want to change or edit certain parts of a PDF, which they cannot edit immediately. Here are some ways to edit PDF files:

Converting PDF

Unless the properties of a PDF allow you to edit it, you cannot edit PDF files directly by default. The first thing you need to do is to use a program to convert a PDF file into a file format that you can edit. You can download a PDF converter from the Internet, or use Web applications that ask you to upload the file and provides a download link once the conversion is finished.

There are many file formats that you can convert a PDF to for editing:

Document formats like conversions to Word documents are great for reports and other documents in formatted text.
Spreadsheets are useful for tables and charts found on some PDF files.
Presentations are often saved as PDF for easy distribution as handouts, but you can also use a converter to edit some aesthetic or textual elements on a presentation saved as a PDF.
Text files can be used for very long documents in plain text to save on space.
Images are great for comics, manuals, graphic novels, and other images compiled through PDF.

Exporting to PDF

Once you have edited the document converted to PDF, you can then restore and compile the document back into PDF. There are two ways to export a document into the Acrobat standard:

Direct export. Microsoft Office and Open Office have scripts that translate the documents into PostScript (for Microsoft Office) or directly into PDF (Open Office).
PDF exporting programs like Adobe Distiller or PrimoPDF can be used to translate documents and files compiled in PostScript to PDF. They can also directly export files into PDF.

PDF may cause minor inconveniences for many people, but with these tips, you can edit PDF documents quickly and easily.