Free Mac PDF editor?

[EvryDayImShufln]

Help! I've been looking all night for a good free PDF editor because for some stupid reason our notes as school were emailed to us in PDF format, which seems pretty uneditable to me. I just want to add some notes too it, nothing fancy, and I definitely won't be paying adobe for something that I'm barely gonna ever use.

Does anybody know of a good PDF editor? Thanks in advance!

Oh btw even a PDF to word converter would do fine, as long as I can somehow edit them!

[apfhex]

Originally Posted by f1400

our notes as school were emailed to us in PDF format, which seems pretty uneditable to me. I just want to add some notes too it

Right, PDFs aren't meant for editing, though it is a great distribution format.

Preview.app can add notes to PDFs!

[dukebound85]

http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

is a good one. i like it more than preview just cant do photos

[telecomm]

Originally Posted by dukebound85

http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

is a good one. i like it more than preview just cant do photos

Just out of curiosity (I've got Acrobat Pro), does Skim allow you to change the font/type size of annotations? That's really the only think stopping Preview from being a good solution in situations like this.

Another, more involved option is to use something like Pages combined with PDFLab. PDFLab can automatically export the pages of a PDF file as separate PDF documents, then you can drag each page into a Pages document (treating it like an image, and stretching it to fill each page), and then just add standard text boxes for your annotations in Pages.

[EvryDayImShufln]

so you're telling me that PDFs are really not meant to be edited and only acrobat pro can do it? I tried skim but its just a fancy version of preview and It doesn't really help to really edit the PDFs in essence

[Queso]

Originally Posted by f1400

Oh btw even a PDF to word converter would do fine, as long as I can somehow edit them!

Can you not just select the text and copy it to another document type using the clipboard?

[kiwi-in-uk]

Originally Posted by dynamicv

Can you not just select the text and copy it to another document type using the clipboard?

Yeah - that's what I do.
This method works most of the time - the only exceptions are PDFs that are locked for copying (I don't come across these often enough for it to be an inconvenience).

[EvryDayImShufln]

Originally Posted by dynamicv

Can you not just select the text and copy it to another document type using the clipboard?

I can, however there are bullets and numbering that become completely flat when this is done (aka are all aligned vertically instead of having different "levels" if you know what I mean). So this is not really an option either.

[njsa04playa]

google is your friend!

[blipmusic]

Originally Posted by f1400

Help! I've been looking all night for a good free PDF editor because for some stupid reason our notes as school were emailed to us in PDF format, which seems pretty uneditable to me. [...]

Couldn't you try contacting your teachers/lecturers and see if they can provide you all with a format that's meant to be edited? Or perhaps tell them to at least leave room for notes?

Say that the lecturer use slides. In that case those should IMO be handed out/e-mailed as a pamphlet with mini slides with room left for notes next to each slide.

PDF is a publishing format not a working/production format, that's the simple reason for the lack of editing tools. It's not really meant to be easy to crack open for the average user as content within might be copyrighted (not only the text itself but fonts as well).

Perhaps your best bet is to copy the text (and fix any typographical errors) from within a PDF viewer - I take it it's "real" text and not images of text - into a word processor/text editor and go from there?

[EDIT: Otherwise I recommend Skim as well, but as you say that's mostly a viewer - a good one! - with the capability to add notes.]

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by blipmusic

Couldn't you try contacting your teachers/lecturers and see if they can provide you all with a format that's meant to be edited? Or perhaps tell them to at least leave room for notes?

I'm gonna make a wild guess that perhaps the OP has resolved their situation by now, since they posted the question 4 years ago. It's a good chance they've already graduated.

[cdcastillo]

Oops. I posted before realizing that it was a really old post. Sorry. Moderators: Delete if you wish, thanks.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by cdcastillo

Apple's Preview?

For viewing PDFs, it's great. For editing, not so much.

[cdcastillo]

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

For viewing PDFs, it's great. For editing, not so much.

For Adding your notes (not that the OP cares, since, as you've already said, he might have already graduated) to a PDF, highlighting, encircling and things like those, Preview is also great.

Unless you are still on Tiger, then it is true, you can only read.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by cdcastillo

For Adding your notes (not that the OP cares, since, as you've already said, he might have already graduated) to a PDF, highlighting, encircling and things like those, Preview is also great.

Unless you are still on Tiger, then it is true, you can only read.

Yes, you can annotate PDFs with Preview, but you can't edit them. In many cases, you can't even fill in PDF forms with Preview like you can with Adobe Reader. For the purposes of this old thread, where the OP meant annotate rather than edit, Preview wasn't an option at all, as the OP was on Tiger or earlier at the time of posting.

[blipmusic]

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

I'm gonna make a wild guess that perhaps the OP has resolved their situation by now, since they posted the question 4 years ago. It's a good chance they've already graduated.

Gah, I didn't even care to look considering the poster above already helped me find the downward spiral. Sorry. :/

Why are we even allowed to resurrect 4 year old threads...? Couldn't they auto-lock after a given time?

[Ninja edit: I realize the irony of making the issue worse by making another post...]

[bighneshar]

Originally Posted by dukebound85

http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

is a good one. i like it more than preview just cant do photos

, Yes, Skim is the best pdf editor I have found and its free

[CoolHandDude]

So....how many posts are there that give advice about one PDF editor or another.....but it seems like a lot of these issues could be solved if Apple included a more robust PDF editor as part of its OS or application package. I just think the resistance against including this capability in our Macs is unnecessary. My one little vote to Apple is ..... give us a more robust PDF reader/editor native with our Macs.

[kkkskpe]

Originally Posted by CoolHandDude

So....how many posts are there that give advice about one PDF editor or another.....but it seems like a lot of these issues could be solved if Apple included a more robust PDF editor as part of its OS or application package. I just think the resistance against including this capability in our Macs is unnecessary. My one little vote to Apple is ..... give us a more robust PDF reader/editor native with our Macs.

You got the point. It is one of the must-have tools in a world full of digital publications.

[misterxdonut]

Have you tried Skim/Scribus? Both are alternatives to acrobat.

[tracheler]

Originally Posted by misterxdonut

Have you tried Skim/Scribus? Both are alternatives to acrobat.

But Skim most important features are not well pointed out.
if you make annotations and want to save them, you have to "Export..." the file. If you merely save you can only read the annotated file with Skim and not with other PDF readers.
You can select graphically parts of pdf and create a new pdf; you can crop single pages or the whole document.
You can select parts of text (unless pdf has been created by scanning) and paste them elsewere (you'll loose formatting).
The problem is that documentation is not very clear and these features are almost hidden.

[CylonGlitch]

Originally Posted by misterxdonut

Have you tried Skim/Scribus? Both are alternatives to acrobat.

I tried Scribus and it couldn't open any of the PDF files I gave it.

[CylonGlitch]

Wondershare PDF Editor Pro is looking good. It has the ability to not only edit the PDFs (change text directly, not markup) but also OCR scanned in pages. This is all good and I like it. If it allowed for form editing and creation, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

[caitlynb]

Originally Posted by CylonGlitch

Wondershare PDF Editor Pro is looking good. It has the ability to not only edit the PDFs (change text directly, not markup) but also OCR scanned in pages. This is all good and I like it. If it allowed for form editing and creation, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Form? not PDF? maybe you can try to convert pdf to excel for editing

[banerjee30]

Acrobat claims to have the ability to edit text on a form