If you send certain PDF files over the Internet, this guide will make your life considerably easier.

A PDF file, which is short for Portable Document Format, is a specific type of digital file that allows you to send certain content that other users can read, regardless of the software they use to view that type of file. To make PDFs suitable for various display systems, the text and images in the file cannot be easily modified once packaged in the PDF format. However, it is not impossible to do this.

It doesn’t matter if you use a Mac or Windows device as your primary, there are tools available to edit text and graphics within a document that has already been converted to PDF. You can even do this kind of change online, as well as convert PDF files to Microsoft Word documents to edit your content in its originally designed format.

You can clearly see that you need to install the program, Adobe Acrobat. First check that it is compatible with the Mac and Windows computers you are using. Not all versions of Adobe Acrobat allow you to edit existing text files once you open your document in this program.

Adobe Acrobat software classifies itself into Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Pro. The company offers the following three editions in both product lines: Acrobat X, Acrobat XI, and Acrobat DC.

These edits below allow for basic text and content editing, as well as the ability to export your document to Microsoft Word:

Acrobat XI Standard

Standard Acrobat DC

Acrobat XI Pro

Acrobat Pro DC

Acrobat Pro DC and Acrobat Standard DC offer a number of other editing capabilities that Acrobat XI does not offer, such as automatic spell check, advanced photo editing, and editing from an iPad.

Acrobat is one of the most popular ways to edit PDF files online, but it is not the only method. There is another way to manually edit a file using free software that you can download. You don’t need to go out and buy the most expensive Adobe software available.

Most other PDF editing websites equip you with just a manual content eraser and new text / image boxes that you can drag and drop anywhere on the page.

Here are some other online editing tools:

FormSwift – Add new content and even an electronic signature.

PDFescape – Add new content and start a new PDF from scratch.

Smallpdf – Add new content and save PDF files on platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, and even Microsoft Word (more on this in a minute).

The tool that suits your PDF will depend on what you are specifically looking to edit and the file size of your document. For example, because Sejda cannot accept PDF files larger than 50 megabytes (MB), check your document size and identify an editing tool that is compatible with your PDF.

You can also compress your PDF to less than 50MB to make it work with Sejda (true to its name, Smallpdf can reduce the PDF file size for you).

For a great internet reference video, you can go to YouTube for information on how to edit a PDF online.