How To Edit A Pdf On Mac Free

We all love agood PDF editor. But while there is an abundance of options for PC users, Macusers are left with one simple question:

What’s the bestway to edit PDF while on Mac?

If you want to edit a PDF, you can shell out more than $100 for specialized programs. Or you can continue reading this article in which we will show you how to edit PDFs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux for free (how to edit the contents of PDFs, such as text/tables/images — not how to rotate pages, delete pages, extract pages, etc.). For advanced PDF editing tools, try Adobe Acrobat Pro DC for free for seven days on the Windows or Mac operating system. Edit text by fixing a typo, adding formatting, or swapping out PDF text. You can also move, rotate, flip, and add images (JPG, PNG, and more), as well as add page numbers or watermarks.

Mac users have ahard time looking for a free PDF editing solution. But with some creativity,there are ways to get around the problem.

Preview

We can’t move forward without mentioning Preview. This pre-installed program comes with every Mac and is the default PDF editor. It does the most basic things except edit text.

How To Edit A Pdf On Mac Free Online

So if all there is to do is rearrange pages or insert annotations (Tools > Annotate), Preview might be enough.

Editinga PDF

To edit PDFdocuments, you will need to access the editing feature of Preview.

Open the PDF you want to edit.

Click the Edit button in Preview.

Select one of the editing options from the toolbar such as add text or shapes.

Other Features

There’s a featurethat lets users rearrange the pages in any order they wish. This can be donethrough the sidebar. Those who don’t have the sidebar on by default can enableit from the View menu.

But what if youreally need to make edits to the text? What can you do? While not an idealsolution, you can create a white box to cover the unwanted copy. Then you cansimply add your text and place it on top of the box.

Inserting a Signature

Adding asignature is also possible if your Mac has iSight or a trackpad connected toit. The freehand drawing tool can also be used to insert shapes—or asignature—straight onto the PDF.

If you alreadyhave a signature saved on your computer, adding it to the PDF is even easier.

Click Sign in the Edit toolbar.

Select a signature from the drop-down list or add a new one.

Position the signature where it needs to be in the document.

ConvertingPDFs

Another possible solution is to convert PDF files into DOC versions. That way, the converted file can be edited in MS Word.

To do this, youmay need to look into using file converters. There are free programs availableonline that will get the job done. After you make your edits, you can save thedocument as a PDF, converting it back to its original file format.

If formatting isnot an issue, there are ways to convert PDFs to Word for free.

Convertusing Preview

Open the PDF on Preview.
Copy the text from the document.
Paste the copy on Microsoft Word.
Make changes to the copy
Go to File > Save As and select PDF from the drop-down menu.

Convertusing Google Docs

Log into your Google Drive account.
Upload the PDF file by dragging the document to the dashboard or by going to New > File Upload.

Once the uploading is finished, right-click the document and go to Open With > Google Docs.

Make the necessary edits. Once finished, go to File > Download As > PDF Document.

Third-partyprograms

Mac OS users whoneed something more powerful have to resort to third-party software. There aremany programs to choose from online. Some of them well-established whileothers, not so much.

If you’replanning to go this route, you need to perform extensive research to make sureyou’re not downloading and installing a dud.

Users also have to keep in mind that no third-party PDF editor is perfect. Running into issues like being unable to edit the existing text is still a possibility.

EditPDFs online

There are sitesthat offer online PDF editing. You simply upload the file and start makingchanges. When you download the document to your computer, it will be saved as aPDF.

How To Edit Pdf On Macbook Pro For Free

It is Adobe that coined PDF, and there is no wonder that Adobe Acrobat is always considered as the first or best solution to edit a PDF on Mac. However, the price tag of Adobe Acrobat just makes us roll back, think about it, $14.99/month, that’s too much.

So, lots of PDF users are in search for a solution to edit PDF on mac without Adobe Acrobat, trying to find a way to do PDF editing with lower cost, or even without spending any cent. And, we are lucky enough to have options on editing PDF on mac without Adobe or free.

What Do I Mean “Edit PDF” on Mac Here?

First of all, I want to make my point fair clear here that, Edit PDF means editing the existing PDF text, image or others in the file, instead of inserting text by adding a text box over the existing PDF contents, instead of just drawing, highlighting or annotating the PDF, instead of reordering, merging, splitting the PDF pages, instead of adjusting the viewing options. And due to this, my solutions will be a little different from others.

How to Edit PDF on Mac Efficiently without Adobe?

While, it is totally understandable if you want to edit PDF on mac as efficiently as editing a Word file in MS Office Word and without Adobe Acrobat. It is possible, all we need to do is finding an Adobe PDF Editor alternative but with affordable price. Which one? Both Movavi PDF Editor and PDF Expert are recommended.

1. Movavi PDF Editor

I’ve never came across any PDF editor as affordable as Movavi PDF Editor, but enables users to edit every bit of a PDF file. Instead of adding text boxes to input the text, Movavi PDF Editor allows users to edit every sentence and every word in the PDF file, no matter Add, Delete or Modify. Equivalently, you can edit the image and link in the file, to add, delete, rotate, or resize. Even, its PDF Creator and PDF Converter helps to export multiple files as different formats.

Movavi PDF Editor Standout Features

(With US$23.95, You Can Get Movavi PDF Editor Lifetime License incl. VAT)

Edit PDF texts: add, delete, modify
Sign PDFs
Convert blank page, Word, Exel, PowerPoint, ePub, HTML, TXT, DJVU, JPG, PNG and BMP to PDF
Convert PDF to Word, ePub, HTML, TXT, JPG, PNG and BMP

How to Edit A PDF on Mac with Movavi PDF Editor?

Grab a free copy of Movavi PDF Editor , it offers free trial, install the software and open it.
Drag and drop the PDF file to this application.
Click on Editbutton, choose to Edit Text or Image.
Then click on the text or image that you want to edit or modify, edit as you always do in a MS Office Word file.
Then head to File>Save.

2. PDF Expert

PDF Expert is a fast and beautiful PDF editor designed exclusively for mac users, you can read, annotate, edit, convert, bookmark, crop, fill, redact, compress, share, sign and merge PDF files very easily.

Regarding the Edit features, it can detect all the PDF text and directly edit the existing PDF text, insert, delete, change font style/size or do any other operations as you can do using Adobe. Even it allows you to edit images (replace, crop, etc.) and links in the PDF file.

PDF Expert Standout Features

Edit PDF texts
Edit image in PDF
Add and edit links in PDF
Fill out PDF forms
Redact, annotate, protect, sign, crop, rotate, extract PDF
Insert/Add/Delete PDF pages, add/remove page numbers
Scan & OCR PDF files to recognize text from scanned PDF or image
Export PDF as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Text, Image
Export annotation summary
Create PDF from Word, Image, etc.

How To Edit A PDF on Mac with PDF Expert?

Grab a copy of PDF Expert from its web, install and open the application.
Drag and drop your PDF files into the app.
Then go to the Edit tab, choose Text.
Choose a part for editing, click on your preferred part, the text will be selected in a blue-slashed box, it means you can edit the PDF file now.
To edit image or link, click on these toolbars, then PDF Expert will detect and render the PDF for editing.
Finally, go to File>Save.

How to Edit PDF on Mac Free without Adobe?

If you believe that there are many genuinely PDF editors allowing you to edit PDF on mac for free, that’s not your fault, you are being misled on the Internet. There may be free PDF tools, but they are by no means PDF editor, they are just free PDF annotator, PDF reader or PDF pages manager that cannot edit the PDF text.

However, if you want to find a way to edit PDF on mac online, free, there is one but only one helps on this, it is Google Docs.

Google Docs is one part of Google Office Suite, enabling users to operate and edit PDF or other Google documents online. It is more like Microsoft Office Word, if you are proficient in working with Word, you can tackle PDF files equally easily in Google Docs.

Follow These Steps to Edit PDF on Mac Free with Google Docs

Login into Google Account, if not a registered user, register first.
Then click on the Menu icon beside your Account image, go to Drive.
Click + New to upload PDF file.
Once the PDF is uploaded successfully and displayed in the right panel, right click on the PDF file, open with Google Docs.
Go to the PDF part you want to edit, directly modify or insert, just as the way you do in MS Word, or you can utilize the toolbars to edit the file.
Once the editing finishes, go to File>Download>PDF. The editing will be saved in the PDF file.

For PDF users even for most of our netizens, Google Docs is really the best invention these years, it keeps its promise to be free, but still powerful, and this is rarely seen in today’s interest-driven world. Yet, there are cases that you may be not recommended to use this tool to edit PDF on mac for free, especially your original PDF has a professionally designed layout and formatting, or filled with tables. Otherwise, it will be a mess to edit PDF in Google Docs, it cannot keep those layout, formatting, table or form fields when displaying in Google Docs, you can check following screenshot:

Consequently, if your PDF is mainly composted of texts and paragraphs, Google Docs deserves a try.

Any Other Solutions to Edit PDF on Mac “Free”?

As I made clearly as above, Google Docs is the only one free PDF editor available. If you still have doubts on this and believe in the presence of many other free PDF editors, like other bloggers told you so, we can now dive in to have a close look on this.

Preview Cannot Edit PDF on Mac

Mac Preview is the free utility to view, annotate, compress and manage PDF pages, but it is not capable of editing the PDF text.

How To Edit A Pdf On Mac Free Online

It does support filling out PDF forms, but the original PDF should come with form fields and interactive elements:

Preview doesn’t allow editing the existing PDF text, or insert text to a sentence, you will have to add a text box into a blank area, or white out the existing PDF text, then input PDF text into an added text box.

Skim Cannot Edit PDF on Mac

Best Free Mac Pdf Editor

On the topic of “free PDF editor software”, Skim is always included on the recommended list from a lot of bloggers. However, it is not. Skim is just a piece of free software to read and annotate PDFs, it cannot edit PDF text. As you can find in following screenshot, Skim offers a set of annotating tools instead of enabling users to edit existing PDF texts.

PDFEscape/PDF Buddy Cannot Edit PDF on Mac

Likewise, you will be recommended to use online, free PDF tools like PDFEscape or PDF Buddy to edit PDF on mac for free, however, they don’t support editing PDFs, you can view, annotate, draw, sign or manipulate the PDF pages, but to edit the PDF text or others, these online, free PDF tools won’t help, even you can not directly fill out a PDF form.

How To Edit A Pdf File On Mac For Free

In PDFEscape, you can find the available features as following:

In PDF Buddy, you can find the available features as following: