How To Make a PDF Editable

The Portable Document Format (PDF) was first developed in the early 1990s as a way to have documents display and print the same, regardless of technology and equipment. Early versions had limited features and adoption of the format was slow. Primarily because the software for creating PDFs was expensive, with even the reader software not being free.

Imagine being able to send full text and graphics documents (newspapers, magazine articles, technical manuals etc.) over electronic mail distribution networks. These documents could be viewed on any machine and any selected document could be printed locally. This capability would truly change the way information is managed.

John Warnock The Camelot Project

These days anybody can create PDF documents for free. Although creating a fillable PDF form with checkboxes and form fields still requires paid software, it’s easy to make a PDF form editable for free. You can add text, images, shapes, or highlight text before saving it as a regular PDF. Below you will find two how-to guides, one for making a PDF editable—if you need to update a PDF’s structure, format, or other components—and the other for filling out an editable PDF.

How to Fill Out an Editable PDF

 

1. Drop the PDF you want to fill out into our free online PDF editor.
2. Fill out the PDF by clicking “Add text box.”
3. Draw, annotate, type, or highlight.
4. Save and download your edited PDF!

To edit text directly in Smallpdf—without converting to another format—requires a Pro account. You can try out this feature without paying a cent by signing up for a 7-day free trial.

How to Edit a PDF on a Mac

 

The second process described above lets you edit PDFs easily on a Mac using some PDF editing tools. Macs don’t have built-in software for converting PDFs into alternative formats. This is why our free online PDF converter tool is useful for editing PDFs on a Mac. This isn’t a problem unique to macOS, though. Neither Windows nor Linux have built-in PDF editing capabilities. Even with Adobe, you need an Acrobat Pro subscription to edit or convert PDFs, with pricing starting at $20 per month.

Why Make a PDF editable?

 

The PDF format has become popular for sharing documents because they preserve formatting, fonts, and content across different devices and operating systems. A key feature of PDFs is that you can secure them, preventing unauthorized access, editing, or copying. You won’t always need to enter a password to open a PDF, but you might be prompted for one if you try to edit—or copy—the PDF content. This helps explain why you might want to make a PDF editable.

Underlining and highlighting in a document are useful functions, but they can only help so much. Many times you may want to copy and paste text out of the document to compile notes. Or you might prefer adding annotations, thoughts, and comments right next to the original text for clarification. Once you change your file into an editable PDF, creating, grouping, and organizing those notes becomes simpler.

Fillable PDFs are Useful for Businesses

 

When a PDF form is editable, people can add relevant information to the document and return it to you. This also makes it simple to create fillable PDF forms, which users can fill out using tools like Smallpdf’s PDF Annotator.

This is important for businesses where quick form turnaround is needed, and there are many reasons to prefer fillable PDFs over printing, filling manually, and scanning. Think about having to collect food preferences from guests, sharing information with a school, or providing project details for potential clients professionally. You want filling in PDF pages to be easy for your customers. And we specialize in making all things PDF easy.

Annotate PDFs to Give Writers Feedback

 

Imagine a friend asking you to read and make notes on their novel or a fellow student seeking your input on their thesis. Neither will want to share the master file with you. But if they share it as an editable PDF, you’ll still be able to add your notes directly to the document. Whether that means typing on the PDF, writing on it, or drawing on it digitally. It makes life that much easier if they’ve turned the document into an editable PDF.

While you’re here, don’t forget to check out all the other tools that make up the Smallpdf suite. You can do tons with Smallpdf besides converting and editing PDFs, including digitally signing, splitting, merging, and compressing your PDFs, or adding a watermark for some security. Our online tools allow you to easily incorporate Smallpdf into your workflow, even when on the go. Smallpdf is also available as an iOS and Android app for mobile devices, and a Windows desktop app for working offline.

How To Make a PDF Editable FAQs

 

How Do I Turn a PDF Into an Editable Form?

 

Use Smallpdf’s Unlock PDF tool to remove restrictions, then use the PDF Annotator tool to add text, images, and annotations directly to your PDF document. Pro users can make more changes with the Edit PDF tool.

How Can I Edit a PDF for Free?

 

You can edit PDFs for free using Smallpdf’s online PDF editor, which allows you to add text, jpg images, and shapes without any cost. Editing existing PDF text requires a Pro subscription.

What Tools Are Needed To Convert a PDF to a Fillable Form?

 

The easiest way to convert a PDF to a fillable form is to ensure the document has text fields where users can add their information. You can add this by following our tutorial on converting PDFs to Word documents. Next, ensure that the PDF doesn’t have any restrictions by using our Unlock PDF tool.

This makes the PDF editable, allowing users to add their information using our Annotate PDF tool, or Microsoft Edge on Windows, and Preview on macOS. They can then save as PDF again, and can send it back to you.

Can I Convert a Scanned PDF to an Editable Format?

 

Yes, you can convert a scanned PDF to an editable file using Smallpdf’s PDF OCR tool, which uses optical character recognition technology to turn scanned text into editable content.