Editing PDF files using Adobe Acrobat Pro

Overview

IMPORTANT: Adobe Acrobat Pro is needed to edit PDF files and is included in Adobe Creative Cloud Suite.  If you need to edit pdf files often, please reference Adobe Creative Cloud License request.

If you feel you will be editing PDF's frequently, Submit a request to Help Desk.

This article goes over some of the main Editing features. To learn how to use more features in Acrobat Pro, please review this link - Adobe Acrobat User Guide

Procedures

Edit text in a PDF

1. Open the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat Pro
2. Click Edit from the global bar at the top or Edit a PDF from the All tools panel from the left and the Edit text panel displays on the left.

NOTE: Acrobat automatically runs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to make the text and images editable on PDF scanned documents.

[Edit highlighted from the top global bar and More highlighted under the modify page area on the left side panel]

The Edit panel includes many options to assist in modifying the document. To view additional editing tools, click More.

Change, replace, format or delete text

After Edit is selected, you will see paragraphs are in their own individual boxes. So, when changes take place one block doesn’t push down an adjacent text box or move this to the next page.

1. Open a PDF in Adobe Acrobat that you want to edit.
2. Click Edit from the global bar located at the top left corner of the Adobe Acrobat screen.
3. Select the text you want to edit/format and either use the small editing box (decrease/increase font size, bold, underline, highlight) that appears or use the FORMAT TEXT area from the left panel or begin typing the new word.

[Format Text options highlighted on the left panel]

FORMAT TEXT options include: Font type, Font Size/Color, bulleted/numbered list, Text Alignment, bold, italic, underline, superscript, subscript, line/paragraph spacing, horizontal scale and character spacing.

Formatting options on the left panel:

[Formatting icons and descriptions from the left panel]

How do I know what font text is in the document?

1. Select a word in the PDF document and then look at the Font under the FORMAT TEXT area from the left panel to show the current font.

[Current Font text highlighted below the Edit area on the left panel]

Changing the Default font for new text

1. Click Menu located in the upper left corner of the Adobe Acrobat screen.
2. Choose Preferences.
3. Click Content Editing and change the Default font for Add Text and Font Size and then click OK.

[Content Editing highlighted on the left panel and Default font for Add Text highlighted from Font Options]

Add new text outside the paragraph area

You can add new text into a PDF by using any fonts installed on the system.

1. Click Edit in the global bar.
2. Select Text under the Add Content area from the left Edit panel and move your mouse on the document on where you want to add the text.
   
   
   [Add text highlighted under Add Content area from Edit menu on the left panel]
   
   
3. Click and drag to create the width of the text block and the Add text tool automatically determines the text properties which will be applied to the new text. These properties can be changed using Format text in the left pane.
4. Type the text.

Modify images or objects

Using the Image objects

1. Open a PDF in Acrobat and select Edit a PDF from the left panel under the All tools area or choose Edit from the global bar at the top.
2. Click once on the Image and the Edit area from the left panel changes to show the image edit tools under Adjust Objects.

[Adjust Objects icons highlighted under the Edit area from the left panel]

Crop, rotate or delete an image

1. Click once on the image and the contextual menu opens. Select to crop, rotate (keep clicking until the image is what you want) or delete (or click the delete key) the image. You also have the options to replace or redact the image.

[Image selected showing the image contextual menu with crop, rotate and delete icons]

Combine or merge files into one PDF document

1. Open Acrobat and click Combine files from the left panel and choose the Add Files button to choose files in explorer or drag and drop them in this Adobe window.
   
   [Add Open Files and Add Files highlighted from the Add files dialog box]
2. OR currently open files in Adobe can be added by using the Add Open Files button. From the Open PDF Files dialog box, select the files that you want to combine. NOTE: To select the files on macOS, press command and select the files, or for Windows, press Ctrl and select files (Windows). 
3. Click Add Files and the files are added to the Combine files window.
   
   [Two files highlighted from the Open PDF Files dialog box]
   
   
4. These files are now added to the Combine files window and can be rearranged in the order on how the files will be combined.  NOTE: Before combing the files, you may want to click Options from the top toolbar to select one of the file size options before converting the files.
   
   
   [Options button and File Size icons highlighted under the Combine files area]
   
   
   [Smaller, Default and Larger File size descriptions]
   https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/merging-files-single-pdf.html
   
   
5. Click the Combine button from the upper right of the Combine files window and the files are not in one document in the order you arranged them in.

Save, export and convert PDFs

Saving a PDF

1. Click Menu from the top left corner of the Adobe window.
2. Choose Save or Save as_ and then choose where to save the .pdf.

Exporting a PDF

1. Click Menu from the top left corner of the Adobe window.
2. Choose Export a PDF and then select an option from the menu that opens.
3. The Save As window opens. Change the name of the document and choose where this document should be saved and then click Save.

[Menu button, Save, Save as... and Export a PDF options highlighted]

Covert PDF to Word – PPTX

1. Open the PDF in Acrobat.
2. Select Convert from the global bar at the top.
3. From the left panel, click the drop-down menu next to Microsoft Word and choose DOCX.
   
   
   [Convert tab, Microsoft Word, DOCX and Convert to DOCX highlighted under the Convert panel on the left]
   
   
4. Select a location on where you want to save the document and then click Save.

References/Links 

Adobe – Edit text in PDFs

Percipio Video – Editing PDF Files

Adobe Acrobat User Guide

Adobe Creative Cloud license request

Last Reviewed: 20-Nov-2024