How can I edit the text or pictures in a .pdf file?

Question

I am not an adobe reader user and this is the first time that I will be using one. I was sent files to edit and change the text content and several images done by a friend of mine but I need a faster and easier way to make these reports done. Please help.

Answer 1

PDF are thought to be a 'kind' of word processor files, which is not true.

PDF are a device independent kind of postscript file. Postscript is a language for printers, PDF is a 'kind of' language for 'virtual' devices.

So you do not edit a PDF, you produce it by printing your source document with a PDF printer.

Acrobat does provides tools to create, manage, and 'edit' PDF, but the kind of editing you do with such tool is not the same kind of editing you do with a word processor.

Is the source material a PDF or not, and do you need to create a PDF as result of your work?

If the source is PDF... the kindly ask your friend to give you the real source, a Word Document or Open Office Document ... whatever.

A PDF is more similar to a GIF image then a Word document, as nobody can ask you to edit a document by editing a GIF image of the document, nobody should ask you to change a PDF by editing it.

Then you can edit it with the same word processor or a compatible one.

To create a PDF simply install any PDF virtual printer , es.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Or use Open Office which ships with an embedded PDF 'printer'.

Please, don't try to edit PDF, is worse then useless, the only reason to edit a PDF is to add to the plain document some kind of index or notes, adding or removing a watermark .... or any other meta information of the document, but never ever change its contents.

The only reason to change the contents of the PDF is that you do not own the original, which raise not only tecnical problems ... and here I quit ...

Answer 2

If the pdf document was scanned in from a paper copy you will have trouble making changes unless you run it through the ocr funtion on adobe. If it is a document that was converted from an application you may be able to save the file as a word document or maybe even a jpeg to play around with the pictures.

Answer 3

The free, M$-Office compatible Open Office can save any Word document as a PDF.

Answer 4

so sorry u can't. This is a .pdf it's created only for watching the document.It's protected. But there is a hope. There are people that are desvolting programs that can decompile the pdf. just google decompile pdf and observe the results
x1a1vier)

Answer 5

You will need to use Acrobat Professional
.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/

With this software you can edit or even export it to another format (Word, html, etc..)