How to edit text in a PDF document

PDF’s are great aren’t they? The formatting is always nice, they do great on the web and have lots of protection options. The only hard part is editing them! Trying to change the text on a pre-created PDF, like the ones you can download of your profile on LinkedIn or ones that might require a signature for an NDA, can really be a pain.

Here’s the bad news, you can’t edit the text in a saved PDF unless you’ve got Adobe Acrobat Pro and that can be expensive, like $100+. If you’re like me however, and got the pro version along with Adobe CS5 or some other bundle then you’re in luck! Before I go too much further here, I do offer my services for hire with this kind of thing, consider paying me or some other consultant a few bucks to fix your PDF instead of struggling with it yourself.

Okay, so for those of you who do have Acrobat Pro the tool you need to use in order to edit or remove text in a PDF is called the touch up tool and it’s under Tools > Advanced Editing > TouchUp Text Tool. Keep in mind, this tool doesn’t do much with editing layout or line wraps. It’s only really good for minor touch ups.

  1. Open your saved PDF with Adobe Acrobat Pro
  2. Choose the Tools > Advanced Editing > TouchUp Text Tool
  3. Click the text you want to edit and begin typing or back spacing

Just below is a screenshot of text I edited in my resume (downloaded in PDF form from LinkedIn) this is really handy if you’re applying to multiple jobs and want to remove or add details specific to each opportunity.