Need to make notes in a PDF, or perhaps correct a few typos or reorganize the pages? Here are the tools and tips you need.
Editing PDFs is something many people need to do, but unfortunately it’s not always the easiest thing to do. The format is not designed to be easily edited, and despite a plethora of Windows and web apps, there is no universal solution beyond Adobe’s expensive Acrobat Pro.
This type of editing is included in many PDF programs that do not have other forms of editing. Both Adobe’s otherwise very limited Acrobat Reader DC and popular third-party applications such as Foxit and Sumatra PDF support labelling and annotation. Full-fledged editors like PDFgear, PDF-Xchange, and Adobe Acrobat Pro also have it, of course, but so does the built-in PDF reader in Microsoft Edge.
Annotations and labelling are part of the PDF format and are saved separately from the content of the document. This means that markups you have made in one program will also appear in other programs, but may look different. Lines, geometric shapes, and freeform shapes you have drawn should look more or less the same, but even here there may be slight differences. So unless you save a screenshot of how it looks on your end, you can’t expect labelled PDFs to look exactly the same to the person you send them to.
