Guides

Last reviewed on 6 October 2026

Short instructions for the most common jobs. Each one describes what you click and what the editor does in response. If a result surprises you, the page How editing a PDF actually works explains the reasons.

Change a word, number or date

1. Open the PDF on the start page. It is shown immediately; a few seconds later the status line at the bottom says “Ready”.
2. Move the mouse over the text. Each line that can be edited gets a dashed blue frame.
3. Click the line. It turns into an input box that contains the current wording.
4. Change the text and press Enter. The page is updated after a moment.
5. Press Ctrl+Z if you want the previous wording back.

While the input box is open, a small bar above it lets you change the size and colour of that line or remove the text altogether. Escape closes the box without changing anything.

Replace something everywhere in the document

1. Click the magnifying glass or press Ctrl+F.
2. Type what you are looking for. All matches are marked on the pages, and the counter shows how many there are.
3. Step through them with Enter, or with the arrow buttons.
4. Type the new text into “Replace with”. “Replace” changes the current match, “Replace all” changes every match in the document.

Turn on “Match case” or “Whole words only” to avoid changing more than intended, for instance “May” inside “Mayer”. A replace-all is one undo step.

Fill in a form and sign it

1. Open the form. Fillable fields appear as light-blue boxes; click one and type.
2. If the form has no fields, choose “Add text”, click where the entry belongs and type. Use “Marks” for check boxes.
3. Choose “Sign”, then draw your signature, type your name or upload a photo of your signature.
4. Drag the signature onto the signature line and resize it with the corner handles.
5. Choose “Download”.

If you tick “Remember in this browser”, the signature is stored on your device so you can reuse it next time. It is kept in your browser’s local storage, not on our server, and you can remove it in the signature dialog at any time.

Cover or remove content

Remove text for good

1. With the Edit tool, click the line that contains the text.
2. Delete the words you do not want, or use the bin button in the small bar to remove the whole line, then press Enter.

Cover something you cannot edit

1. Choose “Whiteout” and drag a box over the area. The box takes on the colour of the page around it.
2. If you need new content there, choose “Add text” and type on top.

Add text, pictures and marks

• Add text: choose the tool, click on the page and type. Press Enter for a new line and click elsewhere when you are done. Double-click the text later to change it.
• Image: choose a PNG or JPEG file. It appears in the middle of the page you are looking at.
• Highlight: drag across the area. The colour is see-through, like a marker pen.
• Draw, Shapes, Marks: freehand lines, rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows, check marks and crosses.

Everything you add can be selected with the Edit tool, moved by dragging, resized at the handles, nudged with the arrow keys and removed with the Delete key. Colours, sizes and fonts are in the small bar that appears next to a selected object.

Reorder, rotate, delete and add pages

• Reorder: drag a page in the left panel to its new position. On a touch screen, use “Move up” and “Move down” in the page menu (the three dots).
• Rotate or delete: use the buttons under the page preview.
• Duplicate, insert a blank page: in the page menu.
• Combine files: choose “Add pages” at the bottom of the panel, or drop a PDF or an image onto the panel where it should be inserted.

Page operations are part of the same undo history as everything else.

Download and clean up

“Download” gives you the PDF with all changes. The arrow next to it also offers the plain text of the document, which is handy for copying the wording into another program.

To protect the downloaded file, choose “Protect” in the toolbar and enter a password twice. The PDF you download then asks for that password before it opens (AES-256 encryption). The password is used only for that download and is not stored anywhere, so keep it safe: a forgotten password cannot be recovered.

After downloading you can keep editing and download again. When you are finished, “Delete my files now” in the three-dot menu removes the document and all its versions from our server at once. If you just close the tab, this happens automatically 2 hours after your last activity.

Keyboard shortcuts

On a Mac, use ⌘ instead of Ctrl.

When something does not work

I click on text and nothing happens

Check the status line at the bottom. While it says “Uploading”, existing text cannot be edited yet. If it says that the page has no editable text, the page is a scan or the text is part of a picture; use Whiteout and Add text instead.

The edited text looks different from the rest

The font in the file does not contain one of the characters you typed, so a similar font was used. Rewording so that you only use characters that already occur in that font avoids this. Background: Why the font sometimes changes.

My longer text runs into the next column or off the page

Lines do not wrap. Shorten the text, reduce the size of that line in the small bar above the input box, or move part of the wording into a new text box with Add text.

The file does not open

Password-protected files ask for their password. Files larger than 1024 MB are not accepted. A file that neither this editor nor your normal PDF reader can open is probably damaged.

I closed the tab by accident

Open the editor again in the same browser within 2 hours, using the same address including the part after the # sign (your browser history has it). The document and the objects you placed are restored. The undo history is not.