How to Edit a PDF Online for Free (No Software Needed)

You can edit a PDF online for free with Edit PDF, with no account and nothing to install. The editor changes text that is already in the document, replaces a word everywhere at once, ticks boxes with an X and places a signature. This guide walks through each task, then covers what the editor cannot do, so you know before you start.

To change text, Edit PDF needs a digital PDF, one exported from a word processor or another app. There is no OCR, so a scanned page is only a picture and the editor finds no text on it to change.

How to change text in a PDF

Every change is made on a text block, a line or group of words that the editor detected when the file opened. Here is how to rewrite one:

1. 1 Open Edit PDF and drop your file on the page, or choose it from your device.
2. 2 Stay in Text mode and move the pointer over the page: the text block under it is outlined. Click the block you want to change.
3. 3 In the panel on the right, type the new wording in the New text box. Adjust Size, Font and Color if needed, and drag the block on the page if it should move.
4. 4 Click Save to apply the change, or the trash button to delete the block. Undo and Redo in the toolbar step back and forth through your changes.
5. 5 When you are done, click Download. The file keeps its name, with _edited added before the extension.

Replace a word on every page

To fix a name, a date or a typo that appears many times, click Search in the toolbar. Type the text to find and its replacement, then click Replace all: a message tells you how many replacements were made.

The search ignores capital letters and also matches inside longer words, so a short search term can change more than you expect. Use a phrase long enough to be unique, and check a few pages before you download.

Tick boxes and add a signature

In Checkboxes mode, pick X, ✓, ■ or ● and click the middle of the box: the mark is centered on your click. The mark is drawn onto the page as text: it does not fill in an interactive form field.

Signature mode places an image of your signature on the page. If a signature is all you need, Sign PDF does the same job in your browser, without sending the document to a server. In Edit PDF, it takes three steps:

1. 1 Switch to Signature mode. Draw your signature, or type it and pick a style, then click Validate; an uploaded PNG or JPEG image is ready without that step.
2. 2 Click the page where the signature should go, resize it, then click it to confirm its position.
3. 3 Click Download: the placed signatures are written into the downloaded file, with no extra step. Apply fixes them on the page if you keep editing the document.

How edited text looks

When you save a change or replace a word, the editor removes the letters of the original text one by one and writes the new text in their place. The background, a photo or a table border under them stays as it was, and so do the lines around. Only on a scan whose text was recognized by another app is the picture of the old words covered with white. Letters drawn over those of the change, or joined to them in one glyph, as in the ligature fi, are written again in a standard font, so zoom in on the result before you send it, and use Undo if something looks wrong.

New text uses Helvetica, Times or Courier. The editor preselects Times or Courier when the original font's name contains them, and Helvetica otherwise, so text set in any other typeface will not match exactly. Rewritten text can also only use Latin letters with common Western European accents, plus the euro sign and curly quotation marks: other characters, such as Cyrillic letters, come out as a dot, including those already in the line you rewrite.

What Edit PDF cannot do

• • Add a new text box on an empty part of the page: you can only change text that is already there.
• • Draw shapes or freehand lines, highlight, underline or add stamps.
• • Fill in interactive form fields: a mark is drawn on the page, and the field itself is left unchanged.
• • Find text on a scanned page, since there is no OCR.
• • Detect the text of a file larger than 4 MB.

Large files and long rewrites

For a file over 4 MB, split it with Split PDF or Extract Pages, which run in your browser, edit the part you need, then join the pieces again with Merge PDF.

If you have whole paragraphs to rewrite, PDF to Word normally turns a digital PDF into an editable .docx whose positioned text boxes approximate the layout of each page. Once you have made your changes, Word to PDF converts the document back.

Where your file goes

Edit PDF is one of the tools that use a server, because text detection and rewriting run there. A PDF of up to 4 MB is sent in full over HTTPS to the ProPDF server on AWS in the Paris region (eu-west-3) when you open it and again after each change. It is processed on the server, then deleted as soon as each task ends, and no watermark is added to your file. A larger PDF is not sent: only signatures can be added to it, in your browser.