If you’ve ever been given a pdf file that you want to edit, or a pdf form that you need to complete and return electronically, you’ll realise it’s not obvious how to edit a pdf file. NOw for proper editing you need to get a powerful program like Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Acrobat Professional, but the good news is that the OSX built in pdf reader app – ‘preview’ – can edit pdf files to a limited extent. You can’t move around or change what’s already in the pdf document, but you can add text and graphics. Here’s how.
If you double click on any pdf file in OSX it will open in an application called preview. You can read the pdf and scroll around etc.
Go up to the View menu and select the menu item called ‘Show Annotations Toolbar. This will give you a toolbar along the bottom of your preview window to help you edit the pdf file.
After you select the ‘View: Show Annotations Toolbar’ menu you will see a toolbar across the bottom of the preview window that looks like this:
These buttons will allow you to edit the pdf file. The left three buttons make an arrow, a circle or a rectangle. The fourth button along allows you to add text to the pdf.
If you click on the text box button – the 4th button across, you can then go up to your document and add in a text box like this:
If you click on the text button you can add a text box to the pdf document like this.
This is a very easy way to fill in pdf files that are forms.
If you highlight the newly added text you can change the font by pressing Apple-T and the font window will appear.
You can’t delete what’s already in a document, but you can draw a rectangle over it to hide it and type something new over the top.
You can cover over existing text using a rectangle with a white border like this.
You’ll notice you can’t change the rectangle color from being black, but you can put a very fat white border around it so it looks like a white rectangle!
If you want to totally change the images and text on an existing pdf file you will need an application like Adobe Illustrator that can actually edit the content of pdf files, but if you only want to make small changes the built in preview app will do the job!
To markup, fill in forms, and save PDF standard files (that can then be read by any PDF reader), you can also use PDF Studio by Qoppa Software. We are happy to note that half of our users are on Macs.
Yes there are lots of commercial options out there – I was just reviewing this as a free one.
Not only that, but in Lion you can also sign documents with your signature using the PDF annotation feature:
1) Open Preview.app under Lion, Click the Annotations button and select the option “Create Signature From Face-Time Camera…”
2) Make your signature on a piece of unlined paper and hold it up to your FaceTime camera so that it aligns with the blue line. Click ‘Accept’ when you like the preview.
3) Once you’ve accepted the signature, you can easily drag it into place anywhere on the PDF you’re trying to sign.
4) Need to sign more documents? The signature you just entered is now readily accessible as a signature from a drop-down within Preview
very cool!
This tutorial is very helpful for me filling PDF applications in.
Great! :)
Warning! Drawing a white rectangle on top of content will not destroy the content. This is a very insecure and sloppy way to modify PDF files.
To save your “sloppy” edits, click on the “Print” command, then hit the “PDF” button. This brings up a menu where you can select “Save as PDF”. This “prints” the image to a new pdf file, obliterating any content you’ve covered up.
Nice! Thx!
Greetings from Portugal!
My question is too simple: I have a FILE that I want to make a Document, which I can attach to a message. A file will not attach, I find.
How to I get rid of the shadow effect when adding a rectangle?
do you know how to remove arrows I’ve already drawn? tks
What a horrific experience–I love my mac, but I had to go to the office and use the PC It’s too complicated! And, it didn’t work. Was going to convert my office to mac, but after spending 3 days on this and missing a deadline, guess that’s not an option!
Sounds nice, but so far I can not get it to work:(
You inform to:
“…double click on any pdf file in OSX it will open in an application called preview”.
If I double click on a PDF in “Finder” (cannot find OSX) it opens up in Adobe Reader.
Please help.
Right click and select ‘Open with’ then Preview.
Sometimes Acrobat Reader when it get’s installed over-rides the defaults.
Hi Wayne,
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately when I right click and select “open with” I get the option to choose between Adobe Reader, Billedfremviser (translates to Picture Viewer) , Safari or Other, but not “Preview” as you mention.
I have looked under “Other”, but I do find anything called “Preview”.’
Where to find it?
Thanks,
Thomas
Hi Wayne,
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately when I right click and select “open with” I get the option to choose between Adobe Reader, Billedfremviser (translates to Picture Viewer) , Safari or Other, but not “Preview” as you mention.
I have looked under “Other”, but I do find anything called “Preview”.’
Where to find it?
Thanks,
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
In your Finder under Applications there is a program called Preview. Double click to open the program. Then, go to File/Open. It will then open in Preview and you can go on from there.