PDF File Edit ?

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News Reader

I have some PDF files that I'd like to edit: either copy or make some
text bold. Some of the lines can be copied or selected, but most
cannot. What causes this and can it be overcome?

Thanks for any help.
 
News Reader said:
I have some PDF files that I'd like to edit: either copy or make some
text bold. Some of the lines can be copied or selected, but most
cannot. What causes this and can it be overcome?

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

PDF is a kind of electronic paper, and as such is by nature not
editable. You can mark it up with the Adobe reader, but editing it is
not really in the cards directly. There are some programs that will
allow some modification, but if you'd like to edit the document as if it
were in a word processor, or a DTP program, then forget it. PDF's are
not created for that purpose.

The reasons that some text might not be selectable is that it may in
fact have been rendered by the PDF creation program as graphics rather
than text with attributes. It's kinda weird how this happens but any
document needs to be made a postscript document before it can be
packaged as a PDF. Because of this, especially on Windows systems, fonts
get substituted and sometimes rendered as graphics. Postscript has it's
roots firmly planted in the Unix realm, and is a bit of a kludge in
Windows.

Hope this helps clear things up for you.
 
I have some PDF files that I'd like to edit: either copy or make some
text bold. Some of the lines can be copied or selected, but most
cannot. What causes this and can it be overcome?

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

I don't know if you can edit PDF files, but I'm 99% sure you can't. That's the reason why a lot
of businesses like telco's email their bills in pdf format - the recipient can't amend & then
start disputing them.
 
Thanks for the info. I downloaded the demo but when I double-click it
I get a box saying 'The program has performed an illegal operation...'
I tried using another program's demo (ABC Amber PDF Converter) and
though it says it only works for the first five pages, all I got was a
heading for each of the pages. None of the actual contents.

I only need to do this for three or four documents, though they do
have more than five pages.
 
A.Melon scribebat:
I don't know if you can edit PDF files, but I'm 99% sure you can't.
Click to expand...

One can edit PDF-files, for example with Adobe Acrobat. Yet, this program
is very expensive and definitely not worth to buy for just editing
PDF-files. I heard rumours about a "Foxit PDF Editor" but did not check
them out, it was mentioned in this group some time ago if I recall
correctly.
 
That's odd; I just downloaded and installed it and it works OK for me (Win
XP).
I don't know if it's worth it for only 3 or 4 documents, but you might want
to try downloading it again,
just in case the file was corrupted.

Eric
 
Onno Tasler said:
A.Melon scribebat:

One can edit PDF-files, for example with Adobe Acrobat. Yet, this
program
is very expensive and definitely not worth to buy for just editing
PDF-files. I heard rumours about a "Foxit PDF Editor" but did not
check
them out, it was mentioned in this group some time ago if I recall
correctly.
Click to expand...

In Windows it's a bit more difficult to edit PDF's. You see a PDF file
is basically a packaged postscript file. Postscript is basically a
document description language. So, using Ghostscript you can extract the
postscript from a PDF file, and then you could, I've never tried this so
I might be wrong, use a Latex or Tex type setting editor to edit the
thing. There are WYSIWYG postscript text editors, but they are
commercial and are not freeware. IIRC Unix and Linux are more suited for
postscript production and reproduction.
 
Chrissy Cruiser said:
I thought so too but for the life of Chrissy, I can't seem to find out
how
to do this.
Click to expand...

Well with Acrobat, the full version now, not the reader, you can edit
fields, change attributes and such, but it would be very difficult to
actually create a document in this environment, and any serious editing
can prove equally difficult. So in short,if you need to do any serious
rearranging, you are almost always better off to create or re-create a
new original if the original document is unavailable.
 
Well with Acrobat, the full version now, not the reader, you can edit
fields, change attributes and such, but it would be very difficult to
actually create a document in this environment, and any serious editing
can prove equally difficult. So in short,if you need to do any serious
rearranging, you are almost always better off to create or re-create a
new original if the original document is unavailable.
Click to expand...

Thanks H-Man, I thought I was missing huge features in Acrobat 6 and I
concur; sometimes a clean slate is best.
 
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