With these apps you can edit any PDF document | Tech

You may have experienced it: you receive a document in PDF format by email with the request to sign it. If you don’t have separate software for this on your computer, the inevitable, cumbersome job presents itself: print the document, fill in the paper document, then scan or photograph the signed document and then send it back to the sender. A completely outdated process of course, and with the apps below you no longer have to perform those time-consuming actions.

There are several PDF editors, paid and free versions. Especially the latter variants tumble over each other online. Which one should you choose now? That depends on what you’re using the editor for. In general, free online editors allow you to add text and comments, merge and split documents, and convert files to and from PDF.

As a rule, however, these programs do not allow you to edit existing text, and many programs have limitations on file size and number of pages. In addition, many of these free editors leave a watermark on the edited document. So, for simple, quick editing tasks, free editing tools are fine. If you regularly work with PDFs and want to have more functions at your disposal, it is better to go for a paid version.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC has been firmly on the throne for many years and remains the undisputed standard. Disadvantage: the software is on the pricey side at $18.14 a month or $217.68 a year, and an annual subscription is required. You do get a lot in return. Acrobat Pro DC offers a complete set of tools and you can also edit scanned documents with it. The OCR engine (optical character recognitionor optical character recognition) from Acrobat DC can convert scanned documents into text, which you can then search and edit.

Despite the enormous amount of tools, Acrobat Pro DC still offers a very pleasant way of working. Recently, the interface has been redesigned and it certainly pays off.

PDFpenPro is a paid PDF editor for macOS that has been around for many years and has many features. Here too, thanks to an excellent OCR engine, you can get started with many different documents and texts. You make changes to texts, replace images and easily create tables of contents and forms.

When you open an existing PDF file in PDFpenPro, the software automatically detects whether the document you are working with is a scanned image or already contains selectable text. PDFpenPro is on the pricey side (217.79 euros), but there is a cheaper version with fewer editing options (153.50 euros). This budget version is also available for iOS devices.

PDF Candy is a free online editor. With 44 tools, you can create or convert PDF files, rearrange pages in a document, add watermarks, password protect files, edit metadata, split or append pages to documents, and delete images. In addition, PDF Candy offers an OCR function for scanning text.

You can’t edit the OCR text in the PDF editor itself, but you can cut the text from an existing PDF file and paste it into a text document, rich text file, or Word document and edit it there.

Smallpdf is a simple, cloud-based PDF editor (cost: 90 euros per year). It allows you to add text and images to PDF files. In addition, you can digitally sign documents and leave comments and make important information stand out.

Also useful is converting PDFs to Word and PowerPoint files. However, the free version that you can try has a time limit of seven days. Unfortunately.

PDF-XChange Editor is free, with no time limit. Most of the standard functions such as creating PDF files, viewing and editing documents, annotating and digital signing are all included. You can make PDF documents searchable with OCR and convert scans and image files to PDFs. The recognition function supports the languages ​​English, German, French and Spanish. The interface is sleek and works well.

Also nice: the free version contains 70 percent of all functions of the paid version (which costs 124 euros), without being bothered by advertisements all the time.

Apple’s Preview is built into macOS and already offers a lot of options. Don’t expect full PDF editing, but you can mark up or edit text, annotate, and add comments to a document.

A nice feature is the signature tool, which you can use to save a signature you’ve created with your trackpad. You can then easily add that signature to a document. That will save you a lot of time.

If you want to edit PDFs on a tablet or smartphone, Xodo PDF Reader is a recommended app, especially for Android users. You can read PDFs, write directly on a PDF document, highlight and underline text, fill out forms, sign documents, and annotate blank PDFs. Edits can be automatically synced to Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.

Also handy: you can open Microsoft Office, PowerPoint, and Excel files and save them as PDFs. While the app is optimized for Android tablets and phones, Xodo is also available for iOS and Windows. The app can be a bit slow at times, but it is free.