Best free PDF editor from Adobe

Easily create PDFs.

It’s simple to export many file types to PDF, whether you’re working with Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, HTML web pages, or PowerPoint presentations. In addition to leveraging the Adobe PDF editor, you can also use a PDF converter to save photos, like PNGs or JPGs, in PDF format. And, since the PDF format offers universal compatibility, anyone — from clients to contractors — can view, review, and sign PDFs electronically with ease.

Collaborate with your team.

The user-friendly commenting tools in Acrobat let you mark up and edit PDF documents for easier communication and document collaboration. Annotate your file before sharing by adding text boxes and formatting text, and insert sticky notes, shapes, or freehand drawings with the Pencil tool to further illustrate your ideas. Once you share, your collaborators can add comments via sticky notes, highlights, lines, shapes, and a typewriter tool that lets you add, underline, or strikethrough text on PDF documents.

Step 1 — upload your PDF files

Choose your PDF to edit by either clicking Select a File or by dragging and dropping a file into the drop zone.

Step 2 — add text to your PDF

To add text, select Tools > Edit PDF > Add Text. Drag to determine the width of the text box you want to add. If you want the text to be vertical, right-click the text box and choose to make the direction vertical. The Add Text tool can detect font name, size, color, character, paragraph, line spacing, and horizontal scaling text properties when close to the point of click. The properties are automatically applied and can be changed using the options under Format.

From there, you can type text and resize the text box by dragging the selection handle. Hover the pointer over the line of the bounding box to move the text box. When the cursor changes to the Move pointer, drag the box to the new location. To keep alignment with the other list items, press or hold the Shift key while you drag.

Under the Toolbar you can add text, highlights, drawing, sticky notes, and more. You can add sticky notes or text boxes anywhere on the PDF. With the Adobe online PDF editor you can strike through, highlight, or underline content. With the drawing tool, you can freehand create whatever you want.

Step 3 — add an image to the PDF

You can try Adobe Acrobat Pro for free for seven days on your desktop, mobile device, or online to use more advanced editing tools that let you move, add, flip, or rotate JPGs, PNGs, and more. Add an image by selecting the option from the Objects list. From there, you can adjust your image however you like.

Click and drag the image to size it as you are placing it. Use the box handles around the image to resize it or go under the Tools tab under Objects to flip, rotate, or crop the image.

To align images or objects relative to each other by their edges, go to Tools > Edit PDF > Edit. Select the object or objects, then press and hold the Shift key and click the objects one by one. Under Objects in the right panel, click Align Objects and select an alignment option. You can also right click the object or objects, and point to the Align Objects option from the context menu to select an alignment option from the submenu.

Step 4 — add links to PDF or edit existing hyperlinks

With Adobe Acrobat Pro, adding links to your PDF is as easy as ABC. Go to Tools > Edit PDF > Link and then Add or Edit. The arrow will become a crosshair, and any existing links in the document will become temporarily visible. Drag a rectangle to the place you want your link to live, whether that’s a text box or graphic. You can customise your link’s appearance by choosing from different link types, highlight styles, line type, thickness, colours, or you can make it invisible. Then you will want to choose a destination for your hyperlink. From there, you can go to a page view by clicking Next to set the page number and see the magnification for the current document or in a different document and click Set Link.

Another option would be to open a file, choose the destination file, and click Select. If the file is a PDF, indicate whether it should open in a new window or an existing one. Then click OK. Another action would be to open a web page. Provide the web page’s URL and then you can also create a URL link to open a PDF at a specific page. Lastly, you can create a custom link by clicking Next to open the Link properties dialog box. You can set an action such as performing a menu command or reading an article that can be associated with the link.