The basic techniques are the same in all PDF editors. You can use a high-priced one like Adobe Acrobat DC ($12.99 per month), with unique features for matching fonts on scanned images, but for many purposes, you can get good results from less expensive editors such as EaseUS PDF Editor, PDF-Xchange Editor (Windows), Nitro's PDFPen (macOS), or Wondershare PDFelement 8 (macOS or Windows). With that in mind, we detail a roundabout way to bake comments permanently into a PDF file at the end of this article.Ī true PDF editor lets you change, move, delete, and add actual content to the PDF, in a way that won't let anyone else change your edits unless they also use a true PDF editor. You can't make any permanent changes to the text, such as removing sensitive data, and anyone using a free PDF viewer like Adobe Acrobat Reader or the Preview on macOS can change or remove the comments you make.
When you add a comment to a PDF, it's akin to putting a piece of paper under a pane of glass and writing comments on the glass. They only let you add comments to the PDF file-either boxed Post-It-style notes or lines and text boxes that appear on a layer above the PDF's actual contents. While many apps call themselves PDF editors, they can't actually edit the text and graphics in a PDF file. If you want to add more text than will fit on the page, we offer some tips in a later section, but don't expect perfect results. Instead, you need to resize the fonts on page one or change the size of the box that contains the text. That means you can't add a few lines of text in the middle of a page one, for example, and make the remaining text flow smoothly into page two, as you can in a word processor. The PDF format was devised before everyone started using web browsers and is based on the printed page. Best Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Softwareīut first, it helps to understand challenges you're up against.