do you know of a free pdf editor

My new all in one has the scan option of creating either an image file or a pdf file. I can view it with adobe viewer, but just wondering if an freeware of editing.
Don't spend you time researching. Just thought you might happen to know. I do not have any need right now to do the edit - just wondering.

Thanks
Fay

Yes, Open Office Writer in the Open Office suite of programs. Apache open-source office software suite is for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. Open Office Writer will read, write and edit pdf files. If you don't have it, you can download the Open Office suite at http://www.openoffice.org. I have this office suite of programs. It's the freeware equivalent of the Microsoft Office Suite of programs. You can get the User Guide documentation here: http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides

It's good stuff, and the best part about it is that it's all free!

Repa,

I did not know open office had a way to do that. I don't have Microsoft Office on my old computer and at one time downloaded open office to there, not sure if I still have it on it. I'll have to check and see.

I had my brother in law download it cause he did not have Microsoft Office. He had to create some resumes and e-mail and he did not have anything to create them in a format that was acceptable. Open office worked for him for that.

But, I have not used it enough to know what all it can do. Certainly had no idea it would edit pds's. I will check it out.

Thanks again.

Fay

Repa,

hmmm well I think I'll give up for now. It seems I needed the pdf import extension. I tried downloading and installing - but it shows there was an error.
It will let me go to file | open, It can open end a pdf file and itt will display it - not sure how to edit it - it opens in draw. Have no idea if that is what is supposed to happen.

Since I do not really need to be able to do this right now - think I'll put it on hold, have too many other things to be thinking about.

Have you ever actually edited a file - I can created a file and export as pdf and import and read - but do not know how to modify it. If you do know how, I may come back at another time, maybe after I retired, for now, I think it will take more time/energy than I have.
Thanks
Fay

Fay, I'm traveling tomorrow and will be in Alabama until Monday. I've done this before, even just a few days ago, but now Writer won't read any pdf document that is not created by it, and I don't know what happened or why. Will have to investigate and so it may be a few days before I can get to it. There is other freeware out there that will do what you want, but haven't investigated which are safe or how good they are. I'll get back to this as soon as I can, but as I said, it may be a few days.

Repa,

That is ok, no hurry at all. I really do not even have a need to do it was just curious. So just mess with it if you want to. I probably should not even have started messing with it. I just get curious stuff - really have other things I need to be spending my time on right now.
But if you do want to mess with it and find out anything, you can let me know.

Hope you have a good and safe trip.

Thanks,
Fay

Check this out:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/pdf_xchange_viewer.html

I have confidence in any of the downloads at this site as to their being safe to download and use. But watch for any other optional software that might be offered in the download and be sure to exclude it. Always do a custom install so you can look for things that may be included in the download that you don't want on your system.

Repa,

I went out to the link, that looks interesting. I will download when I get time. RIght not I have to get back to work. Was waiting on a job to finish running and it just did.

Fay

HI Repa,

I download the file from above and installed. Have not played with it a lot yet, but have some.

First, again, this is not really important. When I scanned in a documents and was able to save it as a PDF, I started wondering if I would be able to change that document. Do not have any need to do that at this time, but was just wondering. Guess I should quit getting side tracked on so many things - at least till after I retire and have more time/energy to play. But I just get curious about things.

Second, I really do not know anything about PDF files. Not sure if they are designed in a way to allow much editing. And if so, it may take a more sophisticated tool than can be obtained free. I am talking about actual modification of the existing content. Editing what appears to be text etc.

OK, so I went ahead and played a little with the new tool, not much yet but some.
I can not find any way it has of actual editing existing content - except for things like highlighting, cross out etc . And it apparently depends on how it was created whether or not you can do that. From what I read, all that looks like text is not really text.

There are some tools that allow text to be added, but I think it is more for comment etc. Could not find much in the way of formatting that could be done.
But this will allow be to add a comment to the document I scanned in, which is what I first was thinking about doing. I thought it would be nice to be able to put a comment on there instead of having to write on the original and re-scan. This will allow me to do that. Just can not change the original content.

I am keeping the tool, could be really handy.

So you do not need to mess with this anymore for me. But if you do for yourself and discover some information that might be useful, maybe you could post in the tutorials.

Thanks a lot.
Fay

fay47 wrote:

 I am talking about actual modification of the existing content.  Editing what appears to be text etc.

OK, so I went ahead and played a little with the new tool,  not much yet but some.
I can not find any way it has of actual editing existing content - except for  things like highlighting,  cross out etc .  And it apparently depends on how it was created whether or not you can do that.  From what I read, all that looks like text  is not really text.

Hi Fay & Repa,

I too was recently looking for a tool to edit PDF, saw this post a while back as I was doing my investigations.

I do not want to highlight or add a comment I actually want to edit the content of the PDF and not having to type the whole document

Most of the free PDF converters out there just convert the pdf to an image. I have tried free software to online tools and that's just the result they give. I do know that it all depends on how a PDF is created and that they are not created the same, so making them editable are not that easy.

Low and behold I found something just by accident.  Gmail and its Google Drive. Google Drive is another cloud system just like Dropbox or Hotmail Skydrive.

Now upon in trying to upload the pdf file to Google Drive I can check a box that says convert file to google .doc format.

I did the conversion and it puts a pdf image page and then an unformatted text page.... it does this for each page of the file to be converted. The only thing is, some words were not recognizable and those needs to be corrected/proof read  and then one can edit/redesign however we feel like.

At least it takes some of the workload away :-)

Hope this helps you too

Sam,

Good to see you here and thanks for sharing this.
I have kind of put this aside for now. Have other issues right now, but may come back to it sometime.
You need to come around more often.

Fay

I just tried this and it works:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4783278_edit-pdf-file-open-office.html

It is free, an extension of open office, a bit confusing, and kind of crude, but it works. You can modify the text in Open Office's Draw once you add the pdf extension to open office. To make the text large enough to view, select View on the menu bar and select Zoom to size it to your preference. You can modify a word by clicking on the line that contains it. The entire line gets selected. Then select the Text tool (T) in the bottom menu and highlight whatever letter(s) word or phrase you want to change on that line, etc and then type what you want. In order to save the modified document, you have to change its name - it doesn't appear to want to replace the existing document - I kept getting an error when I tried to save to replace the existing document.

If you try this and have any problems let me know and I'll try to help.

Fay,

I do come around I just dont sign in I know you have much more important things on your mind right now but I saw this post a while back and when I just found my solution I was super excited to share!! lol

Hope you recovery is a smooth one and my prayers are with you <3

Repa,
Many thanks for the info. I had thought that Open Office was bought over and were no longer giving support. My sister tried Libre Office but she did not like it.... I see it is now Apache Open Office... looks good and may give it a try