PDF Tools

Working with PDFs in the browser

Every tool on this page reads and rewrites the file inside this tab. Nothing is uploaded, and that also draws the boundary of what is possible: these tools can restructure a PDF and draw on it, but they cannot re-render one the way a desktop publishing application would.

Which tool for which job

Start with the page-level tools when the problem is arrangement. Merge PDF builds one document from several. Split PDF is its inverse — pull out a page range, or cut every N pages, with multiple parts coming back as a ZIP. Remove Pages, Reorder Pages and Rotate PDF each change exactly one thing and write the result straight back, which is quicker and safer than opening the full editor to do it.

To mark up every page at once, use Add Watermark for a text stamp, Add Page Numbers for numbering, or Crop PDF to trim margins. Crop only moves the visible area, so the trimmed content is still in the file; it is not redaction. To start from a Word file, Word to PDF turns a .docx into a text PDF without any upload, though it does not reproduce Word's page layout.

Reach for Edit PDF when you need to change what is on a page: fill a form and flatten it, add text or an image, black something out, delete pages as you go. Sign PDF is the same editor with everything except signature placement removed — use it when a signature is all you need.

Two rules about order

A password-protected file has to go through Unlock PDF first. Merge, Compress and Compare open an encrypted PDF in tolerant mode, which lets them read its structure without decrypting the content, so what comes out the other side will not be what you expected.

A scanned PDF has no text layer at all, so PDF to Word, PDF to Excel and Compare PDFs will tell you there is nothing selectable to work with. The route from a scan to text is PDF to Image first, then OCR PDF over the images it produces.

What these tools cannot do

• Compress PDF re-saves the document with a more compact internal layout. It does not re-encode images or downsample streams, so a scan-heavy file will barely shrink and can come back very slightly larger — the tool says so plainly when it does.
• Protect PDF writes RC4 128-bit standard security, not AES, and sets the owner password equal to the one you choose, so the printing and copying checkboxes are advisory rather than enforced.
• Unlock PDF reads that same RC4 scheme and will report an AES-encrypted file as unsupported. It is not a password cracker: you supply the password you already have.
• Sign PDF places a picture of a signature. There is no certificate and no cryptographic signature field.
• OCR PDF takes page images rather than PDFs, and returns a plain text file. It does not add a text layer back into a scan.
• Text pulled out of a two-column layout comes back in visual top-to-bottom order, so the columns interleave. PDFs record position, not reading order, and no tool here can recover what was never written down.

Free accounts work on one file at a time, up to 10 MB. Premium raises that to 50 files and 100 MB, which is what makes batch conversion practical. Merging several PDFs is Premium, since a merge needs at least two files; the other PDF tools work on a single file, so they are not paywalled.