To edit PDFs in the past it was necessary to purchase a license to use Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is the most used program for editing this type of document. Fortunately, things have changed and, nowadays, we can use a large variety of programs to edit PDFs on our PC, without having to pay a dollar.In the guide that follows we will show you the best programs to edit a PDF file, so you can fill in the fields of a form without having to print it, change a few words in a document received in PDF or even to copy text from a book while making the necessary changes for a term paper or a school assignment. All the methods that we will show you will allow you to edit a PDF on Windows PC, Linux and Mac in an effective and simple way.
READ ALSO -> Edit text and images in PDFs
1) LibreOffice
LibreOffice is the free Office suite of programsalternative to Microsoft Office and allows you to edit any PDF thanks to its Draw program. To proceed, all we have to do is install LibreOffice, select the application LibreOffice Draw directly from the Start menu (or from any launcher included in your system), press the icon at the top You open and select the PDF file we want to edit.
Now the PDF will be editable in all its elements, from text to images. Although the original formatting may be lost in more complex documents, the LibreOffice PDF editor is perhaps the most convenient, most efficient, and most handy tool you can find.
2) PDF24 Creator
If we are looking for a complete suite to edit PDFs we can rely on PDF24 Creator. With this suite we can really do anything with PDFs, without having to buy anything. Using PDF24 Creator we can crop, merge, split remove pages, add pages, compress, edit, shrink, sort pages, convert documents to PDF (and vice versa), use an OCR to transform paper sheets into PDF and much more.
It is currently without a doubt the best program for editing PDFsalso given the perfect organization of the functions that the program offers to be able to work on PDFs.
3) PDF Shaper
Con PDF Shaper for Windows you can convert PDF files into editable RTF documents and provides a set of tools for operations such as merging, splitting, rotating document pages, deleting pages and converting PDF to image.
We have already talked about this type of program in the article on how manage PDFs and perform conversion and editing operations.
4) PDF-XChange Viewer
PDF-XChange Viewer is a commercial program, which can also be used for free and which I have already talked about. With it you can write on a PDF and fill in the form fields, adding information or putting crosses, stamps, captions, notes, dots and rectangular shapes and other things.
Unfortunately, we must point out that PDF-XChange Viewer is no longer updated since 2018 and has been replaced by a more advanced paid program called PDF-XChange Editor; we can still download this program and use it without problems, but it may have some difficulty with the newer PDF files.
5) PDF Escape
Among the best programs that we can use to edit PDF for free it certainly stands out PDFescapealso available as a web editor (no installation).
PDF Escape is a high quality program, which allows you to open PDFs and modify them in every aspect: we can apply changes in text, images and also fill forms, insert signatures, highlight text, add shapes and so on. The site offers practically the same functions as the program and is available directly from the browser, without having to download anything.
Best web applications to edit PDF
In addition to programs that can be installed on PCs, we can also rely on web applications to edit PDFs, so that we can also make changes on company computers (often blocked for installing new programs) or edit PDFs on Linux or Mac without installing anything. .
1) DocHub is one of the most effective free tools for editing, sending and signing PDFs, with all edits saved online in your personal Google Drive or Dropbox account.
2) Lumin PDF is a free web application that works on the web browser and also has a Google Chrome app. Once you have uploaded a PDF file for editing, you can add text, highlight and even fill forms or create custom signatures. The files are saved in real time and you can make sure that these are saved in Google Drive or Onedrive or Dropbox.
3) LightPDF is a very simple free program for editing PDFs. With this PDF Editor it is perfect for quickly converting PDF files to Word, PNG, JPG, PPT and TXT, without getting lost in too many options or configurations. Just upload the document and select the conversion format. LightPDF also offers editing options including a pencil, adding basic shapes, color filters, a crop tool and a yellow highlighter.
You can add watermarks to mark PDF files, you can add the password to protect the document, you can add your signature and there are also tools to merge multiple PDFs into one or to split a PDF into multiple documents.
4) iLovePDF is one of the best sites to edit PDFs directly online, adding signatures, comments, text fields and much more. The site is one of the most trusted in the industry and promises to delete all uploaded PDF files within hours of the changes being finished.
5) Smallpdf is another very reliable site to use as an online PDF editor. After uploading the PDF file, you can proceed with editing each page, adding signatures, forms, text fields and much more.
6) Sejida is another good site to edit PDFs online, without having to download anything to your PC. The site in question works really well and allows you to edit every aspect of the PDF, so you can apply the desired changes in a simple and precise way.
Conclusions
Probably at a company level many use Adobe Acrobat Reader in the Pro version without problems and do not complain (also because as a company program it is really very good), but for being able to edit PDFs at home it is preferable to use one of the programs or one of the web applications seen above, in order to save time and money.
The best installable program is undoubtedly PDF24 Creatorwhile the best web application is smallpdf (although web programs all have similar functions, so one is as good as another).
To learn more we can also read our guides on programs to convert PDF to editable Word files and how edit and compile PDFs from Android and iPhone.
