Description

The Adobe Acrobat PDF file format is the most popular way to easily make documents accessible by anyone online.However, sometimes you need to change a PDF or convert it back into an editable format.

In this video, Eric Spellmann SHOWS you step-by-step how to make changes to a PDF or convert it into a Microsoft Word document.

Transcript

Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! Hey I am Eric Spellmann with Spellmann & Associates. And today we’re gonna tackle a different topic. Typically I talk about Online Marketing, Social Media and Websites. But today we’re going to tackle a different issue. Specifically how to edit a PDF?

Many of you use PDFs on your website. And sometimes you come across a PDF that you need to make a change to but you don’t know how. So I’m gonna show you 2 different ways to edit a PDF and as always, totally free!

So let’s start. First we’re gonna go to our browser and the one I prefer to use is Chrome. And my first stop is going to be a place called PDFescape. That’s pdfescape.com. It’s totally free and I love it. Basically the way it works is you upload your PDF, you can make changes to it and then you can save it back as a completed PDF.

Let me give you an example. First of all, down here there is a big orange button “Edit Your PDF Now”. Simple click there and we have a bunch of options. I can either create a new one, which I’d never do or you can upload a PDF, which is typically what you’re gonna want to do.

So I click “Upload PDF to PDFescape” and it asks me where do I want to go for this. So I’m gonna select Choose File and I will go to my desktop and I’m gonna find one, specifically heres one. This is my bio that I send to conferences that I speak at.

So I click that, hit Open and hit Upload. And what PDFescape does is that it’s uploading it and it will present it to me so that I can work on it.

So here it is. I can now go through and work on it. Now over here on the right you’ll see an ad and basically this is how PDFescape works for free. But as you can see I can move around all I want. Now what are some of the editing things that I can do? For instance, what if I want to add some text? It’s very simple. I can either go up here and click on the little cursor or I can click Text Here.

When you click on Text, you can then come down here and then click and just start typing anywhere on the document you want. So for instance I might click here and put “Here is a new paragraph” And of course up here you can see I can change the font, font size, make it bold, italic, underline etc. And so then it’s done. All you have to do is position over it after you’ve clicked off of the text icon again and then you can just grab it.

And you can see you can put it anywhere on the document that you want. So placement is very easy. And if you want to get rid of it, very simple. You select it and hit delete, it’s gone!

What if I want to get rid of a paragraph? Like this paragraph is no longer relevant so maybe I want to get rid of it. I can use the whiteout function. So I click whiteout and then I just draw a box and it’s gone! Once again, turn off whiteout and it’s not there.

But you’ll notice that when I move over it, I could grab that box and move it wherever I want. So you’ll see that the text is not really gone, it’s covered up. But when I save it to a new PDF, it will be gone.

Another option that you can make use of is free hand drawing. That just means creating scribbles, circling or whatever you want. And you can choose colors or anything else you want. And once again I can move that if I want.

If I want to put a new image on here, I can. So for instance what if I want to put my logo on here. I will click on Image, it will ask me where it is. I’ll go find it and I’ll just choose my logo, open and upload. And it takes the image and I simply click and there it is! And as you can see I can put it anywhere I want.

I can resize it as well. If I hold down the Shift key while I’m resizing, it constrains it to maintain the aspect ratio which means it won’t screw it up basically. That works with most programs by the way, in case you’re curious.

There’s a lot of other options on here. I can do a link, I can do rectangles, circles, arrows, point to things. Under annotate I can do sticky notes on it, I can use it like a highlighter. But another cool part is the page. This is another area that I use quite a bit. So for instance maybe I want to add a page to this document. Right now this PDF document is 1 page.

But what if I want to combine 2 PDFs into 1? This is what I would do. On page, I simply click Append. And it asks me what document you would like to upend, go find it. I choose a file and on here I’m going to choose a second PDF which is about some of the speaking topics I do, hit upload and it’s adding it in and look over here on the left, you’ll see it appear right here. Now we have 2 pages in this document.

And if I go over here and hit Save and Download PDF, it will actually save it. Now don’t confuse this little disc here. Because when you save with this Disc, you’re basically saving online. And you can create an account and save a few files online. But, what I typically do is save and download the PDF.

What if you have a PDF and you want to reorder the pages? Very simple. Once you’ve uploaded the file in PDFescape, you click the page you want to work with and on the page here you click move. It’ll ask you what page you want to make it to. I want to make it page 1. Select and it rearranges it. It’s very easy.

I can even rotate pages. If someone sent you a PDF where 1 page is sideways or landscaping you don’t want, I mean there’s all sorts of really neat things you can do.

This is my first area that I go to when I want to edit a PDF because it makes it very simple. The second tool I have is for conversion purposes. What if I have to convert a PDF file to a .doc (Word) file? In other words, I want to take an existing PDF file and convert it into a format that helps me make it brand new or edit the text or whatever I want.

My favorite to do that is called cloudconvert. The website is cloudconvert.org. It works and it’s totally free. The reason I like these 2 tools is they don’t put what we call watermarks on there. In other words, they don’t mark it. Even though it’s free they don’t mark it and say this was done by cloudconvert!

So if I want to convert something to Word, all I have to do is to either select the file from Google Drive (can select directly from there) or grab, drag and drop a document directly from my Computer anywhere on this page! Watch what happens. It comes up and asks me what do I want to convert it to?

I select .doc and then I click on Start Conversion. And basically what you’re gonna see is that it will go through and make changes to the document. You will see the updates and see all of that happening right here. It takes just a second and when it’s done, it will allow you to download it.

I will give you a little word of warning. Sometimes the PDFs that are translated into Microsoft Word Documents don’t come across a 100%. And so you may need to go and edit it a little bit. But basically it is the easiest and the fastest way to do it.

And keep in mind the reason I like both of these websites is because neither one requires me to download and install software and neither one marks up the document with stuff I don’t want.

Well I hope this was helpful if you ever need to edit a PDF. If you want more videos just visit my website ericspellmann.com and I’ll be happy to help. Have a great day. I am Eric Spellmann; I’ll see you in cyberspace.