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How Can I Edit a PDF Document Online for Free?

Cartoonish illustration showing a pen making copyedits to a document on a computer screen. How to edit a PDF online.

This post answers queries about PDF editing, such as:

  • How do I edit a PDF file or document for free online?
  • How do you edit or add text to a PDF for free?
  • How do I edit a PDF in Chrome?
  • How do I amend a PDF document?
  • How do I change a PDF?

The PDF is a very strong file format for saving and sharing documents online. The PDF, or portable document format, preserves the format of the page and can be viewed on any modern internet browser. PDFs are great for contracts, Christmas cards, resumes, e-publications, and just about any other document that needs to be shared online.

If you’ve received a PDF, however, you probably know that it’s not easy to add text to it while preserving the original format. This is especially annoying if you need to sign a PDF or make changes to text or images. Additionally, your document editor of choice may prompt you to convert the PDF to an “editable document” that ruins the formatting settings.

Fortunately, PDF.live provides a PDF editing service with no special software required, entirely online.

How to Modify a PDF Online for Free

To modify or edit a PDF online, all you need is an internet connection. You can head to PDF.live and click the button that says Edit or Sign PDF to see the options for altering your PDF. You can choose Edit PDF to add or remove lines of text in the document. Or, you can select Sign PDF to put your signature on the document. You can also Compress or Merge PDFs, in case you need help sending the edited documents.

Regardless of what you need to do, PDF.live allows you to try our editor for free. Upon opening the PDF.live editor tool, you drag and drop the PDF you’d like to make modifications to and get started.

Drag your PDF to the PDFLive edit tool on your computer in the browser window.

If you find our PDF editor useful and want to edit multiple documents every day, you can join PDF.live Unlimited. With PDF.live Unlimited, you’ll have access to unlimited PDF edits, unlimited PDF conversions, editing greater PDF file sizes, and more. Select PDF.Live Unlimited from the main menu. 

Editing Text of a PDF

If you want to edit the text of a PDF, you can easily do this in PDF.Live’s editor tool. Drag and drop your PDF into the tool and click Edit PDF to open the PDF in the editor.

In the quick access panel, find the Popular Editing Tools and select edit text, for example.

Once in the editor tool, you’ll need to select the Edit Text button on the right side toolbar. 

From the Text Styles panel, you can choose from various tools, like bold the text or left align.

Once you have this tool selected, you can click text in your PDF document to edit it. You’ll see that the PDF.Live tool will automatically detect the text style of the text you’re trying to edit. 

Use the tool to highlight the text you want to change.

Note: When editing text in a PDF that doesn’t have a font that’s compatible with PDF.Live, formatting settings may be lost. If you need to make extensive edits, like adding paragraphs of text or sections, you’d be better off editing it in the original format (PowerPoint, Adobe InDesign, or Microsoft Word for example). 

You might also consider opening the PDF in a document editor (convert from PDF to Word, for example) and re-making the document entirely. Then, you can convert it from Word back to a PDF.

But for simple, quick edits, the PDF.Live edit text tool is a powerful way to edit the text in your PDF. Remember that the text that you’re editing will be outlined with a transparent blue box. If you want to edit text in another section, you’ll need to click that new paragraph before you can edit it. 

Tips for inserting text in a PDF

If you want to insert new lines of text, you’ll need to select Add Text in the Edit toolbar.

To add text, select Edit toolbar and then Add Text.

Then, click and drag on your PDF in the section that you want to add the text to. You will need to alter the font style and size to match the original document, as the Add Text feature does not automatically format your text.

A text box will appear saying Insert Text Here. You can change the style of the font.

This can either be done as you create your text or later on by clicking the text and selecting Style

Then, type the new line that you’d like to add.

Tips for hiding text and images on a PDF

In case there are certain text or images that you want to hide or “black out” before you print your PDF, PDF.live allows you to add shapes to the PDF in the form of a black box (or whatever color you prefer) that acts as a censor bar. While this is useful if you just need to quickly remove some information, this feature may not be accepted on an official legal document, and it is not the same as redacting text or images from a document.

Redacting content means completely removing any trace of it from a document. The only way to redact content is to alter the original file. For example, if a document contains someone’s Social Security number, you should delete it from the original, rather than putting a black box to hide it on a PDF. Simply covering personal information with black (or colored) boxes does not protect the personal information, as those boxes can be removed to reveal what they’re covering.

Still, there may be use cases where you just need to cover content on a PDF, such as hiding content before you print it. This you can do on PDF.live’s editor by going to the Popular Editing Tools and selecting Add Shape

Select the Popular Editing Tools and then the Add Shape option to draw boxes or other shapes over the PDF.

Select the area you want to censor and click and drag to outline the text or image with a rectangle.

Then, click the rectangle outline and adjust the settings at the top of the settings bar. In the properties settings, click Fill and select Black (or whatever color you prefer). Make sure opacity is set to 100%, to hide the text or image.

You can change the outline color and size and the fill color from an infinite option of colors and opacity.

You can also just select the rectangle in the PDF.Live editor and click Style to adjust the settings directly. 

Once you’ve done this, you can close the Properties settings and see that your text is blacked out.

Example of a solid black box over text.

Other ways to alter a PDF document

PDF.live has a lot of editing tools that you can get creative with. Here’s a brief overview of some of the many tools that are at your disposal:

  • Add image: In the Popular Editing Tools section, you can add images from your computer anywhere you’d like on your PDF by selecting Insert Image. If you have a chart or extra picture you forgot to add to your family vacation collage, this is the perfect tool.
  • Highlight: In case you want to draw attention to specific lines of text, in the Annotate section, you can select Highlight in the text options. Explore around these features to see which one is best for your specific need.
  • Draw: This tutorial shows you how to draw on a PDF using PDF.Live’s markup tools.
  • Rearrange pages: You can rearrange the order of pages in a PDF, as well as delete and add pages. 
  • Add signature: Although we cover this more in our PDF document signing guide, you can sign a PDF in the Popular Editing Tools section and selecting Sign. From there, you can follow the steps to create and paste your own signature throughout the document.

Download Your Edited PDF

Once you have completed your edits, it’s time to download the edited version. PDF.live does not store your files online, so if you close the window before you’ve downloaded your edited PDF, you could lose your hard work!From the top right of PDF.live’s editor, select Download, Save, or Print. The download process should automatically begin. If you can’t find your PDF, look on your desktop or your computer’s Documents or Downloads folders.


Illustration from Microvone / Dreamstime 145757425