How to edit the text of a PDF

▶ 1. Why a PDF looks impossible to edit

The PDF format was born to be stable: it has to look identical everywhere, on any computer and printer. To achieve that, the format fixes the exact position of every character on the page instead of letting text flow as it does in a word processor.

That is why ordinary PDF readers only let you read: editing means recalculating the position of the text while leaving the rest of the page untouched. So a real editor is required.

123 PDF Editor PRO does it right inside the browser tab. It is a Chrome extension, so no desktop software has to be installed and it works the same way on Windows, Mac and Linux.

✍️ 2. Editing text that is already there

The editor recognises the font, size and colour of the original text and reuses them: corrections blend in with the rest of the page instead of standing out.

1. Install the extension from the download page and click its icon in the toolbar.
2. Open the document with Choose a PDF (or Open PDF).
3. In the top bar choose the selection mode: Word for a single word, Text block for a whole paragraph.
4. Click the text you want to correct and type the new version.
5. If needed, adjust font (13 are included), size, colour and style: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, alignment.
6. Leave Auto-expand box to fit text switched on so the box adapts if the new text is longer than the original.

＋ 3. Adding new text

When the information is missing altogether, you create a brand new text box anywhere on the page.

1. From the Insert bar choose Add text.
2. Draw the box in the spot you want and type the content.
3. Set font, size, colour and, if useful, a background colour to make the addition stand out.
4. Use the Text type menu (Title, H1–H4, Paragraph, Caption) to give headings sizes consistent with the rest of the document.

✕ 4. Deleting text

Removing a portion is immediate, but it is worth thinking about what takes its place.

1. Select the block you want to remove.
2. Click Remove selected text: the portion disappears from the page.
3. If something else has to appear where the removed text was, consider whether rewriting the block is tidier than deleting it and adding a new one.

◎ 5. Scanned PDFs

If clicking on the text does nothing and you cannot select any words, the document contains no text but only the picture of a page: it is a scan.

1. When a scanned page is detected the Scanned pages detected window appears; alternatively open Local OCR manually.
2. Choose the language of the document or leave Automatic to load all 10 included languages.
3. Click Run local OCR and wait for the progress bar to finish.
4. The recognised text becomes editable: from here you carry on as with a normal PDF.

⌕ 6. Search and replace

When the same word has to be corrected in dozens of places, doing it by hand is a waste of time.

1. Use Search in PDF in the Insert bar to move between occurrences.
2. Open Search and replace and enter the text to look for and the replacement.
3. Switch on Case sensitive if capitals matter, or Whole words only to stop the search catching the word inside other words.
4. Use Replace next to check case by case, or Replace all when you are confident.

? 7. Frequently asked questions

The questions that come up most often on this topic.