How to Edit PDFs?

LibreOffice Draw

This impressed me:

sudo apt-get install libreoffice
libreoffice my.pdf

Just open the PDF, edit, and export as PDF.

The editing tools appear in a toolbar at the bottom of the window (took me some time to find it...)

Relevant feature set I have found so far (Ubuntu 13.04, LibreOffice 4.0.2.2):

  • Remove pages Right click on the page on the left page list > Delete page
  • Change page order: Drag drop pages on the page list
  • Edit existing text fields (edit text, formatting and position). Just click twice with the select tool to enter edit mode.
  • Add new text fields. Choose the text tool at the bottom (T), select the desired text area, and write.
  • Edit non text fields objects like lines or bullets.
  • Create fillable PDF forms (Enable the Form* toolbars and be sure to select "Create a PDF Form")

I could not find an extremely convenient highlight method, but you could get away with editing text attributes like setting the colour red and boldface. I could not change the background colour tough.

If I missed good features, please edit and add them!

Here is a screenshot of me editing a PDF exported from this ODT: https://github.com/cirosantilli/media/blob/f3497274fffcb043b9751c903c9fe715a5b023ce/test.odt on 6.4.6.

enter image description here

Of course, as you can see in the screenshot above, PDFs don't have as much information as the original ODT, and e.g. I can only edit one visible line at a time of a paragraph, and the following paragraphs won't "wrap back" to the correct size, since PDFs simply aren't designed to be editable.

Note: I know that it fails for a few type of PDFs, it has already happened to me.

If that is the case for you, please open a minimal, super detailed and reproducible bug report on their bug tracker https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/ so that devs may solve it, and post the link as a comment.

Despite this, it was still the best open solution when I last checked, and it works most of the time.


LibreOffice Draw does not work for me as the fonts get completely messed up which then throws the formatting of the document off.

Here are three solutions that for me have worked consistently over the years.

PDF-shuffler

I do a lot of combining of PDF documents (as in the Scenario B) and I find PDF-shuffler simple and convenient. I have also used it to extract pages out of a larger pdf document and it works well there too. The PDF-shuffler GUI is simple and it works consistently.

Gimp

Sometimes for Scenario A you just want to convert the PDF into an image and then manipulate the image. If you don't know the difference between a vector graphic and an image, you probably want to convert to an image and GIMP does a good job of that. When you open a PDF with GIMP it will give you some choices about how you want to convert it. Pay attention to the resolution option. Choose a higher number for a larger file size and a more detailed image.

Inkscape

The truth is, there isn't a super easy way to edit PDF files following scenario A above. That is because PDF is a universal format and some of the structure of the document is lost when it is converted to PDF. A simple example: if you take a 3 page report and convert it to a PDF you have broken the links between the text on each page. If you edit the PDF version of it and delete a paragraph on the first page the text from pages 2 and 3 won't automatically flow onto the first page. It would be much easier to edit that document in the original program used to create it.

But for whatever reason, you don't have the original document so you are stuck working off of a PDF. So set your expectations appropriately when editing a PDF document following scenario A.

Once you set your expectations accordingly, you'll see that inkscape is the best tool for most jobs here. It will allow you to import a single page of the PDF document as an inkscape vector graphic. There will be a few things grouped together that don't really make sense, and you may have to change some fonts (assuming you don't have the original fonts installed), but really it is slick.

There is a learning curve to Inkscape but the truth is that you can't manipulate PDF without using some program with a learning curve. For my time, I'd prefer to invest that in learning Inkscape--a great application for creating vector graphics that can come in handy for lots of different scenarios--than I would in trying to figure out how to use a special tool just for editing PDFs.

Good luck


You can use the latest version of Master PDF Editor, which lets you edit all elements on the page.

Hint: Try the newest version first. But, as the last version 1.9.24 that I tried, had a bug that wouldnt open all images of a pdf file, the version 1.9.00 worked very fine, but the only way to get it is a direct link:
http://code-industry.net/public/MasterPDFEditor-1.9.00.x86_64.tar.gz
http://code-industry.net/public/MasterPDFEditor-1.9.00.i386.tar.gz

As mentioned in the comments, Master PDF Editor version 4, which was the last free version that did not put a watermark in the PDF, is taken down from its website, but is available at http://code-industry.net/public/master-pdf-editor-4.3.89_qt5.amd64.deb

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