Edit a PDF online, without uploading it

How to edit a PDF in your browser

Pick Text and click where the words should go. A bar appears with the font, bold, italic, size, color and alignment, so a correction can match the document around it. Drag the box to line it up, or drag a corner to change its size. Shift+Enter starts a second line.

Correct a value that is already printed

A browser cannot rewrite the original letters of a PDF in place, and tools that claim to leave a slightly different font in a slightly different position. The honest method is the one paper uses: Erase puts a white box over the wrong value and a Text field on top carries the correction. It prints identically, and the export draws the white box first so the correction sits on top.

Add text to a PDF

A missing line on a letter, a note in a margin, a date on a receipt. Place it, type it, style it. What you type is written as real text, so it can still be searched and selected in the finished file.

Highlight, box, or remove

Highlight and Box draw attention without changing anything. Redact is different in kind: at download the page is re-rendered as an image with the black box burned in, so the text underneath is removed from the file rather than covered, which is the mistake most redaction gets wrong.

Fill and sign on the same pass

The same page fills forms and adds signatures. Type an answer once and place it wherever the document asks for it; type, draw or upload a signature and place it and your initials the same way.

Read more

How to fill out a PDF form that is not fillable and How to sign a PDF without Adobe Acrobat cover the two commonest reasons to edit one.

Keyboard shortcuts

• t, e, h, b, r arm text, erase, highlight, box or redact; then click the page
• x, d, n arm a check mark, date or name; s and i place a signature or initials
• Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I bold or italicize the selected field; Shift+Enter starts a new line
• Escape cancels a placement; Ctrl+Z undoes; Delete removes the selected field