Hello All,
Wondering if anyone was aware of a utility that allowed actual editing of the contents of a PDF file. I have already looked at PDFTK Builder and while a great app, it does not allow modification of text or graphics within the pdf file.
Suggestions appreciated!! Thanks!!
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There have been recent discussion threads both here and on the other web sites I track. The general consensus seems to be that unless you are willing to pay for a commercial app, there are no current PDF editors available for Windows. OOo 3.0 is intending to have the capability when it comes out, but the current pre-release version doesn't have it yet.
I'm following the same issue as you; for my purposes, I'm investigating Adobe Reader to copy from and one of the current Open Source publishing programs like scribus to move the files I have to a editable format.
Good luck!
There is an extension for OpenOffice that gives Oo.org 3+ the ability to edit pdf files, using Oo Draw. So, now in addition to being able to directly export your files as pdfs, OpenOffice can also actually edit pdf files!
The extension is currently only in beta, but I've used it with success in OpenOffice 3 beta Portable. Check it out: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport
PDEdit
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfedit
Free editor for PDF documents. Complete editing of PDF documents is possible with PDFedit. You can change raw pdf objects (for advanced users) or use many gui functions. Functionality can be easily extended using a scripting language (ECMAScript).
Might be a good candidate to be made "Portable".
pdfedit may be a good possibility, but it says, "You will need to have cygwin installed."
That means that it cannot just be run as windows application and needs to be run from a unix-like environment (cygwin).
We could always recomplie it from source to work in windows and while were at it make it portable.
self.path = path if self.path == None else self.path
Have you tried www.pdffiller.com? This web based tool helps fill in pdf forms on line. You can fax, print, email or export your file. You don`t have to install any additional software what is a plus.
But the only thing is he was looking for an editor, not a form filler ;).
(I'm almost sure this is spam from the uname).
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
I use Inkscape to do this at my office when I need to change a logo, or adjust some wording. It does a really good job, though sometimes I have to toy with it a bit to get it to do what I want it to. It will import most PDFs that I have thrown at it.
Hope that helps.
---
Jeffrey Wiggs
Loving God and Learning Laughter
Still looking for a "no cost" mechanism to modify text within a pdf. All the converters out there seem to convert to a picture which still won't allow text editing. I may just need to use Adobe9 to fill in my pdf form.
Any other thoughts?
Thanks much!
I just tried Inkscape as discussed in the previous post. There is a development version on this site.
I was able to edit/modify text in the pdf files that I tested but I could not edit the pictures. There might be a few tricks to learn that I don't know about. I had previously tried Open Office but I was not impressed with how it imported the pdf. In comparison, Inkscape renders the pdf better. I also tried the Gimp. It imported the pdf files ok but at this time I was unable to do anything other than view them. Again someone else might have more experience with this.
In summary - Inkscape will let you modify the text as you have requested.
Tried it as well, and was able to make the text edits I needed in the pdf, print out my copies and I was good to go. Thanks for the tip.
Hoping the next release of Open Office will make it a tad easier!!
where download pdf edit file
winkom
Sorry to bump this old thread but has anyone found something recently to edit PDFs? Inkscape only allows to open a single page at a time and OO has lots of bugs
Editing PDFs is much more complex than Word documents. The whole reason is that normal PDFs are supposed to be the final form and are NOT supposed to be edited. You have commercial options available, though.
A better solution is to not be in a situation where you have to edit a PDF (it's *exceedingly* rare to need to edit a PDF outside of a work situation where you lost the original or editing stolen ebooks). Just save your source files (the original document, etc), edit that, and produce a new PDF.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
John T. Haller I respectfully disagree with your comment about reasons why people might need to edit a PDF. I have often had situations where I have needed to edit a PDF for reasons other than the ones you describe. Here are three just off the top of my head...
* My handwriting is very bad due to a hand injury so I prefer to type whenever I can. On a number of occasions I have been asked to fill out a PDF "form" that was just a list of questions and empty white space without adequate room for some answers. I usually ended up having to say "see attached" and then copy the Q&A into a Word doc to complete.
* In college two different professors I had required the students to submit work as a PDF and then used some sort of software to edit the PDF's with markup and comments.
* I play D&D and there are lots of free and pay-for "adventures" posted as PDFs out there (see https://dungeoncontest.blogspot.com/) that are NOT "stolen" and that I would like to add my own twists and modifications to for personal use, rather than having to use crappy sticky notes and typed attachments.
There are many other reasons as well but I think I have made my point.
Bumping this old thread, I was looking for something similar myself and just recently ran across Scribus which has a portable version for 32-bit Windows right here (https://portableapps.com/apps/office/scribus_portable) but it does require also adding GhostScript Portable (also here: https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/ghostscript_portable) for full functionality. I haven't tried it yet but it seems to me from the description it will do what the OP and others wanted. I will post back after I have had a chance to try it (hopefully) this weekend.
Note that you bumped a 3-year-old comment, which was also a bump of an additional 2-year-old thread.
While Scribus allows for importing PDF's, it isn't really designed for editing them. Instead, I would recommend using LibreOffice, which will allow editing in the Draw module. It isn't ideal, but it works for me the rare time when I need it.