How to edit PDF file like Word

PDF (Portable Document Format) files are exactly what the name implies: They are portable that is they can be moved from one place to another, uploaded, downloaded, re-uploaded while still maintaining their structure and readability. However with this portability also comes a few caveats, one of which is the inability to easily edit the files.  But with the right pdf utility, you can be able to easily edit pdf files while maintaining its structure. Here I’d like to introduce an all in one tool (PDFelement 6) for handling PDF.

PDFelement 6 is a PDF utility that, among other many cool features, allows a user to edit PDF files. Some of the other features include the ability to create PDF files, convert PDF files to other file formats, annotate and add comments to PDF files, add watermarks and Backgrounds to PDF files and much more. Be sure to check the website for a full list.  In this ‘How to’ however, I will be focusing on bringing you up to speed on how to edit a PDF file using PDFelement 6. All you will need is your PDF file and PDFelement. I will be using a trial version of the PDFelement (This will leave a water mark on every page) and I will be editing a pdf file located in the Downloads folder with the name Lorem-Ipsum.pdf

Step 1. Open PDF element

After installing PDFelement 6, a shortcut will be created on the desktop and by double-clicking on it, you will be able to access PDFelement 6. PDFelement 6 launches onto a launch page with several options, one of which is ‘Edit PDF’

Step 2:  Select file to edit

Click on Edit PDF and a Window will open. Navigate to the folder where the PDF file you want to edit is located (In my case the Downloads folder). Select the file and click open to open it.

Step 3:  Locate the text you want to edit.

Below is how my file looks like before editing. I will be editing the text to replace it with the English translation of the popular ‘Lorem Ipsum’ text.

Step 4. Edit the text

PDFelement 6 will surround each separate paragraph with a border. To edit a particular paragraph double-click inside the box surrounding the paragraph and edit it. You can add, remove and change content like any decent editor would allow. All editing shortcuts like Ctrl-A to select all and Ctrl-V to paste in content works. In my case, I copied the content I wanted to paste in from Wikipedia and did a Ctrl-V to paste into the PDF element editor. In addition, I also added an extra paragraph at the bottom to show that typing in content also works. Below is the final text after editing. I have highlighted some of the areas that I have edited.

Step 5: Change text appearance.

PDFelement 6 also allows you to change the font type, font size, to bold text, italicize, underline, add superscript and subscript and also align content to the left, right, centered or justified to suit your needs accordingly. To edit text by changing the text appearance, select the text you want to edit and use the properties panel on the right to edit it. To demonstrate, I will change the font type of the first paragraph of my content from ‘Calibri’ to another radically different font the ‘Blackadder ITC font types. And here are the final results:

Step 6: Save the final results.

After you are done with the editing you should now save the file to, well, save the changes. Like Any other editor, two options are available for saving a file. First the ‘save’ option and the second option is the ‘save as’ option. The first option will save the changes to the file you were editing without creating another file. This will be the option most of us will be using. However, if you wish to leave the original file as is, then the latter option will suit your needs. This will ask to save your changes to a new file. In my case, I will use the second option

Click File menu in the top left corner of the PDF element window to access the file menu items and click either the ‘save’ or ‘save as’ menu item.

Select one of the Folders listed in the Current Folder section to save your file to that location or click browse to save to another location. At this point, the trial version of PDFelement 6 will offer you two options. Either save the file with a watermark or buy the full version to use PDFelement 6 without any limitations. For demonstration purposes, I will save the file using the trial version by clicking ‘save with watermark’. A save as dialog box will appear as shown below

Type in the name new file you want to save as and click save.  That’s all. To confirm that it is working, you can open the new PDF file with any other PDF editor and you will see that the file is exactly as you saved it.

There is worthy to mention, there are more amazing feature is coming with PDFelement 6.3 launched. It not only meet your basic need of PDF editor, also it support open, read and fill XFA-based PDF forms, add any file attachments in PDF documents, multi-tiled screen display and drag operation and so forth. Then you will find you can edit your file just like in Word. If you want to try Mac or Windows version for free, click here.