![]() Very few PDF to Word converters can handle this challenge. “Reading” a PDF file correctly and then converting it into Word is a very difficult computer science problem. This makes converting a PDF file to Word fairly challenging. Once a Word file is converted to PDF – that’s all gone. Building blocks such as headers, footers, paragraphs, columns, and tables keep elements in a Word file in place. In practice, converting PDF to Word has many issues as most PDF files don’t contain any underlying structure. Once a PDF file is converted to Word, editing the file should be relatively straightforward – right? It sounds like a good starting theory. Given everything we’ve learned, it may seem that the most intuitive solution to edit a PDF file is to convert it into an editable format, such as Word. What about converting a PDF to Word? And then converting it back to PDF? This is especially true for users that need to make a lot of text edits. The drawback to using an online editor is obvious: by only allowing a user to edit a file by making changes on top of a PDF, the solution doesn’t make sense for making extensive edits. This allows a large number of users to get their work done for free! ![]() Many online PDF editors, such as DocFly, also have freemium pricing plans. Online editors can also help with tasks like merging, rotating or deleting pages from a PDF. While they cannot directly edit objects, they enable users to complete many common tasks viewing PDFs, filling out a PDF form, making small changes (usually by erasing and then adding objects) or adding notes and highlights to a document. Online PDF editors work by virtually printing objects on top of an existing PDF. Leaving aside the high cost, very few software programs even make the cut. So while desktop PDF software may seem like the only solution for editing a PDF file – the reality is more nuanced. Very few PDF software programs are good enough to manage this issue. Trying to edit a PDF can thus get frustrating very quickly. Thus trying to edit one object (a particular sentence or even something simple like adding a signature, for example) may impact all the other objects in the PDF. In practice, the majority of PDF files today are on a single layer.Ī flattened PDF is much more difficult to edit, as desktop PDF software cannot differentiate between different objects in a file. This can be achieved by flattening a PDF using a software tool such as Adobe Acrobat or creating a PDF file from another format (such as an image file). If the creator of a PDF file does not want the file to be edited, they are likely to “flatten” the PDF file (or place all objects onto a single layer). If you have short-term needs, most desktop products offer a time-limited trial that may be good enough.īut desktop software isn’t perfect either As of today, there is no good and cheap (or free) alternative to purchasing a premium desktop PDF program. While this is certain to change in the future, unfortunately this isn’t the case today.Īs I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, desktop programs suffer from a range of issues: (1) they are expensive, (2) difficult to use and (3) tend to suffer from quite a few bugs. Today, most browsers are not powerful enough to enable direct editing of a PDF inside the browser. Unfortunately, there’s no getting around this one – if you want to edit objects inside a PDF directly, you need desktop software. Let’s dig deeper into why this is the case.Įditing objects directly requires desktop software PDF files are hard to edit because they aren’t meant to be edited! While there are many solutions that enable a user to make changes to a PDF to some degree, they all suffer from weaknesses in one way or another.
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