Downloading and editing pdf

How to edit a PDF in Adobe Acrobat

Acrobat is available for both Mac and Windows, with a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Follow these steps:

1. Open Adobe Acrobat.
2. Go to “File,” and click “Open.”
3. Choose the PDF file you want to edit.
4. Once your file opens, select “Edit PDF” from the toolbar on the right.
5. If you want to edit text, place your cursor on the text you want to edit.
6. Using the “Format” option at the top of the toolbar, select “Format.”
7. To edit an image, place the cursor on the image you want to edit.
8. Modify it by using the “Objects” option.

Problems with creating and editing PDFs manually

When it comes to PDFs, there’s a lot to love. They make the process of sharing important, print-ready files a breeze. But, like many things in life, PDFs aren’t perfect.

On the PDF creator’s side, it can be tricky to construct a PDF manually when dealing with a lot of information. Oftentimes, companies are faced with lengthy Microsoft Excel sheets that contain troves of data to sift through and organize. They’re burdened with the challenge of taking their collected data and placing it into a PDF document manually – something that’s time-consuming and tedious. To put it lightly, it’s not a project for the faint of heart.

Collecting data is just the first step, though. Once you have the information, you need to figure out how to present it to your audience in a way that makes sense. Formatting can be even more painful than dealing with the data itself because it’s tricky to make all the PDF elements look right. You need to be cognizant of where to insert text, images, and graphics so the end product is easy to understand and looks professional.

Be careful when putting a PDF together because there are many ways for things to go wrong. There are a few issues that plague even the most seasoned PDF professionals. One big problem is getting an image in a PDF to look just right. If a photo’s resolution is low, it will look fuzzy in the PDF, so you must ensure the image is clear and the resolution is high. Another major flub is not setting up the bleed, or margin, correctly. If the bleed isn’t set up right or is missing, then it will look weird when a PDF recipient tries to print it. Lastly, it’s imperative that your PDF dimensions are set up correctly – if you want your PDF to be a particular size, make sure to adjust it so PDF recipients won’t run into printing issues.

Now, let’s shift gears for a moment and talk about the people who receive these finicky PDF files. A 2017 survey conducted by Ghent Workgroup, an international graphic arts think tank, found that errors in PDF files are, perhaps, more common than we may think, even among experts. According to Prepressure.com, close to 17 percent of the survey’s 1,100 respondents — or 187 people — reported finding errors in 50 and 90 percent of the PDF files that they encountered. Another 25 percent of survey respondents — or 275 people — reported finding errors in 10 to 50 percent of the PDF files that came across their desk. 

That may sound like a lot of PDF errors floating around, but close to 52 percent of those professionals who were surveyed — or 572 people — reported finding errors in less than 10 percent of PDF files, if any at all. 

The fact is that a wide range of things can go wrong at any given time. Even if someone receives a PDF that’s completely free of errors, there may be some information that must be updated, which means that the PDF needs to be edited manually.

Editing a PDF isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t always easy. When edits must be made, people need to use software, which can be either robust and pricey, or basic and free. Regardless of which software you choose to use, it will take time to edit any errors or information.

Problems with editing PDF files manually tend to vary with each case, although there are a few commonalities. There always seems to be a problem with matching font type and size when editing a PDF manually, so be careful when injecting new fonts into your PDF. You can use free tools, such asWhatTheFont, to see what type of font was used in the original PDF and then match it accordingly while editing. There’s also a risk of ruining a document’s format when you want to move elements around. Some software will allow you to shift PDF content around with ease, while some software will require more of a design eye to make everything look just right.

It may seem like there are a lot of problems when creating and editing PDFs manually, but don’t fret. We have the rundown on what to do in the subsections below.

When you need to collect a lot of information

It’s safe to assume that most organizations need to collect a lot of information. Whether a company is gathering data on customer insights, sales leads, or event registrations, there’s seldom a time when we’re not looking for some information to understand our business components better.

But the problem with gathering a lot of information is figuring out ways to organize and manage it. Since we’re bombarded with data every day, using a strong data collection tool is imperative to help sift through the white noise and get to the important points.

Here are a few steps that will help you collect information the right way:

1. Choose a robust tool

There are many tools out there that range from free to pricey, depending on your needs. Choosing a strong tool is the first order of business before embarking on your information collection journey because it will help you gather information efficiently and effectively. Many information collection tools come with free starter plans, so you’ll have plenty of options to figure out which tool will work best for you.

2. Ask pointed questions

After you decide on a tool to use, ask yourself a few questions, such as, “Why are you collecting information,” “What is its purpose,” and, “What do you want to do with the information?” Asking pointed questions will help you get to the crux of why you need data and how you’re using it. Just like anything else in life, there’s no point in doing something unless there’s a purpose behind it.

3. Define your goals

Make sure to clarify your goals once you’re clear about why you want to collect information. Defining your information collection goals will make organizing and managing the task much easier, especially when you’re gathering and managing large amounts of data. A big information collection issue is not having a big-picture mindset about what information to collect and what should be understood from the data.

4. Determine a plan of action

Next, it’s time to develop a plan around organizing your data. This will vary depending on the tool you choose, answers to your questions, and your goals. Having a plan is important because it will help you achieve your goals and stay on the path to success.

5. Start collecting

Once you have everything in place, you can start collecting information. Collecting your information is exciting because you’ll be able to cross-reference data with your goals and plan to determine if you’re going in the right direction. After you’ve collected your information, make sure it’s orderly and presented in a way that makes sense to you and anyone else who will be using it. There’s nothing worse than trying to decipher data that has no structure to it.

When you need to turn that information into documents

Once you’ve gathered your information, it’s time to turn it into a presentable document that can be shared with the world.

Before taking on the task of turning your data into a document, revisit your answers to the key questions outlined at the start of your project: Why are you collecting information? What is its purpose? What do you want to do with the information? What’s more, you should keep your goals and plan at the forefront of your mind so you understand what type of data must be included in a PDF. 

When you’re completely clear about what you want from your data, you’ll be ready to turn it into a document. Though this seems easy in theory, there’s actually a lot of manual labor involved in the process. It can take extra time, energy, and attention to detail to get your data into a document and have it look just right.

Since many organizations collect a lot of data through Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, it’s not always easy to turn that information into documents. Healthcare companies are a great example of this. They receive mass amounts of patient data every single day, including general information, current state of health, health records, medication usage, and family health history.

But healthcare organizations must find a way to consolidate this data into one document so they can share it easily with medical staff, referral doctors, and patients. When healthcare professionals make PDFs, they oftentimes need to copy and paste the information by hand, which isn’t very efficient. It’s a problem and a huge strain on limited resources.

It’s not just healthcare, though. Small and large businesses; nonprofits; and educational institutions struggle with turning valuable information into documents. You also can face similar hardships while creating a custom design for your PDF.

When you need a custom design for your PDFs

PDF files come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re using it for contracts, tickets, coupons, or certificates, a well-designed PDF document plays a crucial role in making the right impression.

Most organizations are plagued with the need for a well-designed PDF. Nonprofits, for instance, need custom PDFs designed for event invitations. Let’s say that a nonprofit has a big gala coming up and needs to collect names, addresses, and phone numbers of interested people. They funnel this data into a Microsoft Excel sheet, which is great, but how will that information be used to create invitations?

The nonprofit needs to transfer the data into a professional-looking document so they can mail out formal invitations. Usually, the easiest way to do this is to extract information manually from an Excel spreadsheet, place it into a PDF, and figure out a way to design it. Designing a PDF this way is unproductive, especially when there are automated ways to streamline the process.

There are many other examples in which organizations or individuals must turn information into documents. This is a common situation for contractual agreements, including instances when a real estate agent, financial professional, or advertising agent must turn information about a deal into a document. For example, if a financial planner wants to close a deal on an investment opportunity and must transfer client information into a PDF, he or she will want a seamless way to get it done. Simply turning information into documents will save time and increase productivity. Turning information into documents also allows for easy sharing, which can be implemented by companies – large and small.

Now, let’s talk about a PDF’s aesthetics. Though a good-looking PDF design is important, the process of getting there isn’t always easy. PDF files, by nature, don’t come to mind immediately when it comes to aesthetically pleasing design. But that doesn’t mean PDFs should be boring and drab!

You don’t need to be a designer to create a PDF, but you should have an action plan in mind. Oftentimes, design software has a lot of bells and whistles that can feel overwhelming to people with non-design backgrounds. Moreover, the surplus of features can have an adverse effect and encourage people to add more colors, fonts, and images unnecessarily.

Before getting started, think about what you want your PDF to achieve. What is its purpose? What point are you trying to make? What do you want people to glean from it?

For example, if you’re a real estate agent, your goal is to collect leads and send them a weekly, email newsletter that displays homes you’ve listed for sale. In this case, your PDF’s purpose might be to generate attention and encourage leads to call you about the advertised homes for sale. The design of your PDF would be personalized to display a lead’s first and last name, as well as share pictures of the homes that you’ve listed for sale. The PDF’s design would be customized with branding, images, and content that is relevant for your leads. Luckily, there are ways to automate this process. Read on to learn more!

Automate PDF Creation Using Online Forms

You’ve heard about the problems with creating a PDF manually. It sucks your valuable time and adds tedious work to your day. So the question remains: how do you automate this process

Believe it or not, by using online forms.

Online forms are still the easiest way to input information, and new form technology has made the process easier and easier for the responder — whether it’s your customers, students, or colleagues. More importantly, a lot of forms you encounter today are easy to fill out from mobile and tablet devices, meaning higher completion rates and more accurate information. 

Using online forms, you can collect signatures, dates, long text fields, images, and just about anything else you can imagine.

Do More with JotForm PDF Editor

Need a way to design customized documents seamlessly using data from completed forms that you make and send out?

Now, there’s a new way to make it happen with JotForm PDF Editor.

JotForm’s tool lets you design a PDF template by dragging and clicking. It connects to any online form you have with the platform, and responses that you receive through your form automatically populate sections of the PDF with the information you need. So, that one PDF template you create automatically turns into dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of unique PDFs as people fill out your form and submit it to you.

Regardless of whether you use PDFs internally or want it sent out to clients as a professional-looking document, you need a fast way to automate the process. JotForm forms and this product solves this problem by turning form responses into designed PDFs. It requires a minimal amount of time up front but saves hours of time and allows you to become more productive.

The features of the tool comes to serve the common problems of everyday PDF users since it came as an idea from listening to our users and their problems in many different industries. Automation, design, communication and durability were 4 main pillars that came out from all that we have build our product on.

JotForm users across a diverse range of industries — from a paint distributor in Calgary, Canada, to an event management company in Metro Vancouver, Canada — have tried PDF Editor and incorporated it into their workflows. With JotForm PDF Editor, you can not only turn submission data into polished PDF documents that can be shared with clients but also create a plain copy for your records. What’s more, the layout features in this useful product can help you put your personal touch on documents — add a business logo, or change the font color, font type, background color, line spacing, and page margins. Many of these new features were directly inspired by our users, who felt there was a better way to turn bland, clunky PDFs into professional-looking documents.

Field Assessments

Anyone who works in the field needs to have an airtight system for not only collecting information, but also for sending it back to the office. There’s naturally a lot of friction in this process. If the final assessment of field data is supposed to be shown as a polished, professional PDF, then how on earth do you simplify that?

Automation, of course.

Start with a simple web form that includes fields asking for the data you’d need inputted from out in the field. Then, you can have the assessment PDFs generated automatically whenever you submit all the information you need.

Performance Evaluation

Students and employees alike benefit from performance evaluations. A great way to standardize your evaluations across the board is by using the same online form for each evaluee. But when it comes time to share that evaluation information, what then?

Having the responded form automatically create a well-designed performance evaluation PDF with all of the evaluation information eliminates the time-consuming step of copying and pasting the form data into a different file. The final PDF is not only great for your records, but it’s a great file type to send to colleagues and the evaluee themselves.

Certificates

Say you’ve hosted a conference or a workshop and want to give participants a professional certificate for attending. You could email each of your participants, find out how they’d like their name spelled on the certificates, and then manually type in each of them on separate Word docs. When you’ve finished doing that, you can save each of the files as separate PDFs and then email them back to the attendees. You could do that. Just like you could order sandwiches at Starbucks. It’s a possibility, sure. But there are clearly more suitable options.

Instead, you can send each of your participants the same exact online form asking them to enter how they’d like their name on the certificate. On the other end, after they submit the form, is a beautifully-designed PDF certificate. You can give it a once over to make sure there aren’t any errors in what they entered, but it should be ready to send back their way. All of the work is done upfront with designing the certificate; then the rest of the work is done for you once they enter information into your form.

Work Orders and Incident Reports

Work orders can either be generated from a customer request or internally within your organization. They’re designed to get a better idea of the work that’s needed, the cost required, when and how it will be completed, and by whom the work will be completed.

The only problem is, they can be a pain to create manually. Sure, you can create a work order template in a word processor and add information whenever a customer sends a request. But the time-saving method of generating a work order again requires a simple online form. Your customer or colleague can fill out an online form with the information you need, and your work order PDF can automatically be populated with the new info.

Event RSVPs