Powerful Pdf Tool A-pdf Merger For Mac
When you need a document that looks the same everywhere, no matter which app opens the file, you need a PDF. They’re the closest thing we have to digital paper. PDF files are ubiquitous for detailed forms, eBooks, whitepapers, and anything else where you don’t want text and fields to move around depending on your device and window size. And they’re easy to use. On Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android today, you can view PDF files with built-in tools.
You can often highlight text, fill out forms, and even add basic annotations—but want to edit the text or replace an image in a PDF? That’s where things get tricky. We’ve tested fifteen PDF editors to find the best apps to both view and edit PDFs. Here are the apps to use the next time you need to tweak a PDF—along with tips to turn anything into a PDF. → Want to make a PDF instead? Check our to find out how to build your own PDF documents on any device. What Makes a Great PDF Editor?
PDF editors are not all made equal. The PDF apps you've likely used the most—Adobe Reader, Apple iBooks, Windows Reader—are PDF reader apps. They're built to help you read PDF files like you would a book, and help you flip to the page you want, search through the book, highlight text, and perhaps fill out PDF forms and sign them digitally. Then there are PDF annotation apps, including macOS Preview, Xodo, and most mobile PDF apps. These let you add comments to PDFs, rearrange pages, add shapes and arrows to call out things in the document, and insert new text blocks and images into the PDF. You can't change the core, original PDF text—but you can add to it much like you might write notes on a printed document.
The most professional PDF software is PDF editor apps. These tools—including Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, and more—often look like Office apps with detailed toolbars and menus, and can cost hundreds of dollars. They can change anything in a PDF. When you need to replace an image, change the text in a PDF, add new form fields, or edit anything else in a PDF, they're the apps you need.
They can also create new PDF documents and forms from scratch. We looked at both PDF annotation and editor apps in this roundup, checking to see how they displayed PDF documents, if they worked well, and if they could edit PDFs without deeply changing how the original PDF document looked. We also tried to find the software with the best value for price—and found four apps that stood out as the best tools to edit, collaborate, and convert PDF files. Need to edit text in a PDF? Is the rare free PDF editor that can edit text or add form fields to a PDF. It’s designed around a set of tools to rearrange pages in PDFs, merge documents, crop or rotate pages, add headers and footers with page numbers, recognize text with OCR, split PDFs into smaller documents, and more. Among those single-purpose tools is a surprisingly feature-filled PDF Editor that, yes, lets you edit text and add form fields for free.
It’s not perfect. Sejda struggles more with editing text using custom fonts than other PDF editors (as you can see with the italics text above).
Powerful Pdf Tool A-pdf Merger For Mac Mac
So if your PDF uses an uncommon font, your best strategy is to select the text, switch to a similar font included with Sejda, and then make your edits. Also, it adds the same formatting to all text in one text box, so you can’t italicize or bold one word in a paragraph—instead, create a blank space, then add a new text box for the formatted word and drag it in. You can also start from scratch with a blank document, perfect to make a new PDF form. Sejda packs an impressive suite of features into an easy-to-use editor that’s ideal for your one-off PDF edits. Sejda Price: Free to edit 3 documents per day including up to 200 pages each; from $5/week for Web Pro or $69.95 perpetual desktop license for unlimited edits and batch processing The Best PDF Collaboration App: (Web, Android, iOS, Windows) To annotate and collaborate on PDFs anywhere. Want Preview-style markup features that work everywhere?
Is the PDF editor to use. It can't edit text—but it does include all the annotation features you need to markup your documents. Open, drag-and-drop in a PDF file, and seconds later it’ll open in your browser with all of Xodo’s markup features (without needing to make an account). You can fill out PDF forms, search through documents and bookmark pages, highlight or strikethrough text, and add images, text boxes, shapes, signatures, and other annotations. You can’t edit existing text and photos in PDFs—but you can add almost anything else you want to a PDF.
Or, from the app’s front page, you can select to merge PDF documents or rearrange pages as well—or turn a Word document or photo into a PDF with Xodo’s mobile apps. Xodo is also designed for collaboration.
You could add standard annotations and text notes, then download the PDF and send it to your team as with most PDF editors. Or, you can work from the same online document together. Once you’ve signed up for an account, you can invite others via email or copy a link to your document. Then, add annotations and collaborate around comments on your PDF, like you do in Google Docs.
Xodo Price: Free The Best PDF Converter: (Web) To turn PDF files into editable Word documents—and vice versa. It’s not a PDF editor, per se. But if you want to turn your PDF back into a document and edit everything in it, is one of your best options. It’s a conversion app that can turn over 200 different file types into the file you want.
Add a PDF, and it can turn it into a Word document, plain text file, HTML webpage, ePub eBook, or individual images. The Word document (.doc or.docx) option is the most useful.
It extracts the text and images, replaces fonts with standard ones that are on most computers, and preserves as much formatting as possible. It’s not perfect—but it does quite a good job of making a document that’s similar to your original PDF. CloudConvert can even be automated with Zapier—have Zapier watch a Dropbox or Google Drive folder for new PDFs, and CloudConvert can automatically turn them into Word documents and save them back to the original folder. You can then customize the documents further in Word or another word processor—before perhaps turning the finished document back into a PDF.
CloudConvert Price: Free for up to 1GB files and 25 conversion minutes per day; from $8 per 500 conversion minutes with unlimited file size Learn more in our, or build your own Zaps to convert PDFs automatically with Zapier’s. Tip: Microsoft Word 2013 and the newest version in Office 365 for Windows (from $6.99/mo.) can convert PDFs to Word documents as well—though CloudConvert seemed to do a similar or better job, for free, in our tests. The Best Online PDF Editor: (Web, Android, iOS, Windows, Mac) For a full-featured PDF editor web app. Want a full-featured PDF editor on your tablet, in your browser, and on your laptop?
Offers them all, with advanced mobile, web, and desktop apps for editing PDF files with one subscription—along with free apps to view and add annotations to PDFs. Foxit’s has a bit more trouble with editing text in custom fonts—the online app misses some capitalizations and formatting like Word’s PDF conversion, and its desktop app was a bit better but still had some issues. It makes up for that, though, with powerful PDF tools to extract data from filled forms and add them to spreadsheet files, turn a page of your PDF into a template for new documents, and a tool to pull all your PDF comments into a new summary PDF document.
Foxit Price: Free Foxit Online or Foxit Reader for desktop to read and sign PDFs; from $7.99/month Standard for online and mobile editing features and full desktop apps including OCR tools; from $129 one-time purchase for desktop Then, here are four other great PDF editors that work in fewer places or cost more, but can be great choices on your Mac or Windows PC for professional PDF work: (Mac) To rearrange pages, sign documents, and mark up PDFs for free on the Mac. Is the Mac’s hidden gem.
Double-click a PDF, image, or almost any other type of file on your Mac, and they’ll open in Preview to, well, preview them. Preview can also crop and resize images, and let you tweak brightness and more with its editing tools. And with PDFs, you can use those same tools to annotate your PDF documents. Some of Preview’s PDF editing features are a bit hidden. There’s a highlighter tool in the toolbar by default—then click the pen button to open the Markup toolbar to add callouts and text annotations, notes, and freehand drawings. You can add a signature with your trackpad—or sign a piece of paper and hold it up to your camera to copy your real ink signature. Then, if the page thumbnail sidebar is open, you can drag-and-drop pages to rearrange them—or open another PDF in Preview and you can drag-and-drop pages from one PDF into another, or drag an entire new PDF into the sidebar to merge two documents.
You can also save individual pages from your PDF as images from Preview’s Export options. Preview can't edit the original text and images in your PDF files, or add new form fields. For everything else, though, it’s a handy set of tools for core PDF edits. Preview Price: Free with macOS Tip: Windows 10 also includes a Reader app to read PDF documents, highlight text, add notes, and fill out forms. It’s great for core PDF reading—which formerly required Adobe Reader—but it isn’t designed for editing PDFs and can’t add a digital signature to them.
On the web, offers similar annotation and signing tools, along with options to build PDF template documents. (iOS, Mac) To quickly edit PDF text and images. At first glance, doesn’t look like a full PDF editor.
It’s more focused on reading, with a clean interface that focuses on your documents. With options to view two PDFs side-by-side along with a zoomed out view to see every page in your document at once, it’s a great way to read through even the longest PDFs. It organizes and syncs PDFs on iPad, and lists recently viewed PDFs on Mac to jump back in where you left off. And when you need to change something, its nearly-hidden tools are waiting in the slim toolbar. You’ll see annotation tools to highlight or underline text, add signatures, and insert shapes and notes in the default Annotate view. Open the zoomed out view that shows all pages at once, and you can drag-and-drop pages into the order you want, rotate pages, add new pages, or extract a section of your document into a new PDF.
Then, in the Edit tab, you can click any text to edit it (using the document’s original font for any letters that are contained in that section, and system fonts for any other characters). You can also add links to text and images, or insert new images into your documents. It doesn’t include OCR tools or options to add form fields—but is great for editing text, images, and formatting in PDFs. PDF Expert Price: $59.99 for Mac; $9.99 for iOS, plus additional $9.99 Pro in-app purchase for PDF editing tools (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac) To edit PDFs and add forms in an Office-like editor. Has a PDF editor app for everyone.
Only need to add occasional edits to PDFs on the go? Its free PDF app for iOS and Android lets you read, annotate, and even edit text in PDF documents as long as you register for a free account. Then, on Mac, PDFelement Express includes simplified tools to annotate PDFs and edit text without needing the full app. Or, you can get the full PDFelement app for a Microsoft Office-style editor to tweak anything in your PDF documents. The Standard version includes full editing features, while the Pro version uses OCR to recognize text in images and can add form fields to your PDF documents.
It can even recognize form-style sections in your documents and turn them into fillable PDF forms automatically if you want. With its large icons and clear labels, it keeps things from feeling complicated while still including a wide range of tools in its apps. PDFelement Price: Free on iOS and Android; $39.95 with simplified editing tools; $59.99 PDFelement Standard for Mac or Windows with core editing tools; $99.95 PDFelement Pro for Mac or Windows with OCR tools (Windows, Mac—plus reader for Android, iOS, and Linux) To create detailed PDFs and forms. Is the original PDF editor, the app that started it all in 1993. Today, it’s to documents what Photoshop is to photos. The ubiquitous Acrobat Reader is great to view PDFs, add highlights and notes to annotate PDFs, and fill out forms—especially complicated ones like government forms that might not open well in other apps. For anything else, you need the full Adobe Acrobat which is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud or as an individual app subscription.
The latest versions of Acrobat are packed with features but feel surprisingly easy to use. It hides most of the tools by default, so you can read PDFs and fill in forms without editing them if you want.
Click the Edit PDF button in the sidebar to edit text, images, links and more—with editing tools that tend to keep the PDF file looking as it did originally more than other PDF editors. Acrobat will only use fonts you have installed when editing the PDF—though it includes more font editing options to ensure spacing looks correct in your edited text. Acrobat can also create new PDF documents from scratch with its basic word processor, or can convert other files and merge them together into PDFs. From the Tools page, you can also use OCR to recognize scanned text, merge or split PDFs, redact data, and build detailed forms that can summarize typed text into a barcode to easily copy it to another device or app. You can connect Adobe Acrobat forms to databases, build mini-apps inside your PDF documents with JavaScript, and build action wizards to automatically process PDFs. It’s more than you’d need to edit text in the occasional PDF document—but if you work with PDF files daily, Adobe Acrobat is still the industry leader with the most advanced PDF editing and creation tools.
Adobe Acrobat Price: Free Adobe Reader to view PDFs, add highlights and basic annotations, and fill out PDF forms; $24.99/month (or $14.99/month if paid annually) to edit PDFs, compare changes, use OCR on scanned documents, and more; from $299 one-time purchase The next time you open a PDF and wish you could change something—you can. Grab one of these apps, and you’ll be able to tweak text, add a new image, highlight your favorite things, and build your own PDF forms in minutes. Need an easier way to make new PDF documents? Here's how in our guide on. Keep Reading:.
Read on for our detailed analysis of each app Whenever you’re sent an important document via email – maybe a contract or an invoice – it’s likely that it will be in PDF format. Adobe invented the PDF back in 1993, so it’s not only one of the most commonly used files, but a veteran file format, too. The main aim of the PDF (Portable Document Format) is to send important information to another person quickly and easily.
Despite the fact that this file type is so old, its capabilities haven’t changed much over the years. It’s still a highly versatile way to combine text and multimedia within one document. Another reason why PDF files have become commonplace in today’s interconnected world is that they work with almost all applications, hardware and operating systems. These documents use the PostScript language, which makes it possible to display a range of text fonts, graphics and other media in a single, universal file. Of course, while virtually all operating systems support PDFs, that’s not to say they can handle everything that pertains to this file format. Upon receiving a PDF, you should be able to view it in your browser without any trouble, but what if you want to print the file out, for example? Fonts or other formatting may not come out quite right, and these elements aren’t exactly easily tweaked from the OS level.
However, that’s why PDF readers exist: not only do these apps allow you to easily view and print PDFs, but they often give you tools to pull off more advanced tricks like editing, converting or sharing these documents with ease. In this article, we’ve picked out five of the best PDF reader apps for Mac users. We’ve also highlighted the s. Cloud integration Available to download directly from the Mac App Store, from Kdan Software is one of the most powerful and popular PDF management tools for Apple computers.
It functions as a file manager, file converter and page editor. With the software, you can easily edit PDF files by adding freehand writing, text boxes, sticky notes, hyperlinks and annotations. And to ensure that important documents don’t get mixed up, you’re able to label them by adding tags and color-coding.
What’s more, to keep track of all your saved files, you can make use of an import history feature. The app works with iCloud, too, meaning you can back up and access saved documents on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. There’s even compatibility with Dropbox, so you can easily import documents from devices that run on other operating systems. Overall, you should find the app smooth and quick to use. It’s powered by a proprietary rendering engine, which aims to ensure that large files are processed and loaded without any lag. Currently, the app costs $59.99 (£42), although there is a free version that you can try before you purchase. Not cheap If you’re looking for a powerful business-targeted document management tool for the Mac, then it’s definitely worth checking out.
The software makes it a breeze to create, edit, convert, sign and watermark PDF documents. Used by the likes of IBM, Pfizer, Colliers International and Nike, the app is one of the most versatile PDF management tools out there. It offers some nifty time-saving capabilities like batch processing, which is handy if you have a host of documents that need uploading and editing at the same time. So, for example, you can convert, number and watermark hundreds of identical PDFs. You also get optical character recognition (OCR) here, allowing you to scan and turn PDF documents into editable and searchable files. Furthermore, you can add signatures to electronic documents, which is handy in many areas of business.
And if you’re working with documents that contain sensitive data, as is likely the case, you’ll appreciate the security features iSkysoft has implemented, including the ability to password protect documents. A single license costs $99.95 (£72), but there is a free trial available to give the product a spin first. Track changes to a PDF Adobe not only invented the trusty PDF document in the first place, but the company has also created some top-notch apps to manage them. Is a great example, and it supports both Windows and Mac devices. The software allows you to create, edit and convert PDF files with ease.
Whether you happen to be using a desktop PC, laptop or tablet, Acrobat lets you turn any paper document into a PDF file. You just have to snap a photo of the piece of paper and upload it to Adobe’s platform, then you can subsequently edit it. Acrobat also lets you convert PDFs into any Microsoft Office file format, preserving all fonts and formatting. Thanks to integration with Excel, you can even edit data in scanned tables, making it easier to edit and analyze financial data. Just like Kdan Software’s PDF Reader Premium, you can keep track of the changes you and your colleagues make to PDF documents. Acrobat is capable of detecting the differences between two versions of the same PDF, too.
You can sign up for a business plan for £15.17 ($21) a month, which gives you the option to add more team members in the future. Works with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is a robust and easy-to-use solution for managing business documents. And with a four-and-a-half star rating in the Mac App Store, it seems to be one of the most popular options out there for Mac users. The software gives you the ability to read, edit and annotate PDF documents from a central dashboard. One of the great things about PDF Expert is that it’s fast and slick to use.
Thanks to smooth scrolling and a fast search function, you can quickly find what you’re looking for across multiple PDF files. This app lets you edit images, text and links, plus the software can automatically detect fonts, size and opacity of writing. Plus, if you happen to own an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, you can add annotations and notes to documents on-the-go. Like most PDF apps out there, PDF Expert comes with a free download option, but the premium plan costs £54.49 ($75). Extensive fonts Wondershare has developed a Mac version of the popular app, which is positioned as an easy way to edit PDF documents. It gives you the tools to add text, images, links, backgrounds, watermarks, headers and footers to PDF documents.
The software provides an extensive selection of PDF editing options. Not only can you add text to documents, but you can also tweak the font type, size and style. There’s the ability to rotate, extract, replace and crop images too. PDFelement is a great option for teams in particular, with powerful collaborative capabilities, letting you add sticky notes, comments, text boxes and more.
And you can use the tool to fill out business documents such as contracts and tax forms. The software costs $59.95 (£42), but once again, you can sign up for a free trial.