PDF, or Portable Document Format, is a document format that allows users to compile text in a book format. PDF often includes a page counter, scroll options, a highlighting feature, and a “jump to page” option that allows users to simply type in the number of a particular page and go to it. PDF is the standard for e books, manuals, and tutorials and can even be used for cartoons.

How to Edit a PDF File

PDF files are created and edited with Adobe Acrobat. Unfortunately, you cannot edit PDF files that have already been made unless you create a new PDF document and copies the contents over to the new file. This can be easily done if you go to the Edit tab on the PDF document that you want to edit and click on the “Copy File to Clipboard” feature. This option will save the entire file to the Windows Clipboard. Then you can click on the button that says “Click to create PDF Using Acrobat.com” to access Acrobat AIR. This will allow you to create your own PDF document. Paste the contents of the previous document into this new file and then just edit it.How To Edit PDF Files

PDF Create 6.0
PDF Create 6.0 is a program that allows you to create PDF documents from other file formats. For example, you can create a PDF document from a Word, Excel, Notepad, or HTML document or even bits and pieces from each document. PDF Create 6.0 allows the user to add images, special effects, highlighting and more to any PDF document that he/she creates. The software costs $27.99.

PDFedit
PDFedit is a free program available at SourceForge that allows you to edit PDF documents within the window. With PDFedit, you can simply open the PDF document from within the PDFedit window and have full control of the PDF document. You can edit text, extract images, add content, and even change the title of the document.

PDF Studio
PDF Studio is an powerful alternative to Adobe Acrobat. The software provides users with additional tools that Adobe Acrobat does not have. PDF Studio allows users to split and merge documents, add bookmarks and watermarks to PDF documents, add headers and footers to PDF documents, add passwords to PDF documents and set security levels, and much more. The software also integrates well with Google Apps, SharePoint, and Acrobat.com itself. PDF Studio sells for $60 but it is also available on a free trial basis on qoppa.com.

Skim
Skim is a free, open source project software that is available for Mac OS X. The software is able to read PDF documents and allows users to take notes. Skim is able to do everything that Adobe Acrobat can including reading PDF documents, adding and editing notes, highlighting text, making snapshots, and navigating pages using table of contents. The software can also export notes as text, magnify text and images, display PDF documents in full screen, make and display presentations, implement passwords, create bookmarks, and much more. Skim supports Apple Remote Control, automatically downloads remote PDF documents, and can be completely customized by the user. The software can be found and downloaded for free at http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/ .

PDFescape
PDFescape is a free service that offers various tools for reading PDF files, editing PDF files, automatically filling out forms, creating forms, and even includes several webmaster tools. PDFescape is hosted on its official website and does not require the user to download or install any software. PDFescape allows users to highlight text, add notes, and do virtually everything that a PDF document is capable of doing. PDFescape can be found at http://www.pdfescape.com/ .

Open Office
Open Office is a free replacement to Microsoft Office and includes the same features. However, Microsoft Office is not capable of editing PDF documents, whereas Open Office is. Open Office can import PDF files via its Draw feature to preserve the layout of the document. This allows the user to change small portions of the text or perform other editing tasks without disrupting the appearance of the file. Open Office is also capable of exporting files as PDF which allows users to create their own PDF documents. Open Office can be found at http://www.openoffice.org/ and the extension that allows it to import/export PDF documents can be found at http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport .