A PDF is meant to look the same everywhere, which is why it’s hard to change. There are no paragraphs inside, only words placed at exact positions on the page. Most free tools get around this by covering the old words with a white box and typing new ones on top, in a font that never quite matches.
You can do better than a white box.
How to change text
- Open the PDF and pick Edit text.
- Click the paragraph you want to change. It opens for editing, in place.
- Type, delete, paste. Lines wrap as you write, and the paragraph keeps its width and alignment.
- Press Esc or click outside to finish it.
- Click Download when you’re done.
Undo takes back a whole paragraph edit, and Redo puts it back.
It keeps the font
New words are set in the font the PDF already uses, at the same size and colour. Words you didn’t touch aren’t redrawn at all: they stay exactly as they were.
PDFs often carry only the letters they needed when they were made. If you type one that isn’t there, say a “Q” in a document that never had one, a matching open font fills in just that letter: one shaped like Arial for Arial, like Times for Times.
Bold, size and font
Select words inside the paragraph and use the controls in the bar:
- Bold and Italic
- Text size, in points
- Font: the fonts on this page, or a standard one
- Colour, from the swatches next to them
When the paragraph gets shorter or longer
Delete a sentence and the text that follows moves up to close the gap. Add one and what follows moves down to make room, as in a word processor. A footer set apart at the bottom of the page stays where it is.
What about scanned PDFs?
A scan is a picture of a page with no text inside. Edit text still works: the first click on a scanned page reads it, and your changes are set in letters taken from the scan itself, so the page still looks scanned. There’s a separate guide on editing a scanned PDF.
The text stays text
What you download is a normal PDF with real text: it can be searched, copied and edited again, here or in Acrobat. Your file is edited in the browser and never uploaded.