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What is a PDF file? How to Open, Edit or Convert PDF files

Developed by Adobe Systems, a file with the .

PDF files may contain not only images and text, but also interactive buttons, hyperlinks, embedded fonts, video, and more.

You'll frequently see product guides, eBooks, flyers, project applications, scanned documents, brochures, and all kinds of different files available in the PDF format.

Because PDFs do not require the software that created them, nor on any particular operating system or hardware, they look the same no matter what device they're opened on.


How To Open a PDF File

Many men and women head right to Adobe Acrobat Reader whenever they need to start a PDF. Adobe created the PDF standard and its app is certainly the hottest PDF reader out there. It's completely fine to use it, but I find it to be a somewhat bloated program with lots of features that you may never need or want to use.

Most internet browsers, like both Chrome and Firefox, can start PDFs themselves. You might or might not require an add-on or extension to do it, but it's quite easy to have one available automatically once you click on a PDF link online.

I highly recommend SumatraPDF or MuPDF if you're after something a bit more.


Adobe Acrobat is the most popular PDF editor, but Microsoft Word will do it too. Other PDF editors also exist, like PhantomPDF and Nitro Guru, Amongst Others.

FormSwift's Free PDF Editor, PDFescape, DocHub, and PDF Buddy are a few free-to-use online PDF editors which make it really simple to fill out forms, like ones you sometimes see on a job application or a tax type.

Just upload your PDF to the website to do things like insert images, text, signatures, links, and more, and then download it back to your own computer as a PDF.

Watch our Best Free PDF Editors list for a frequently updated collection of PDF editors if you are after something more than just form filling, like adding or removing text or images in your PDF.

How To Convert a PDF File
Most people wanting to convert a PDF file to another format are interested in doing this so they could edit the contents of the PDF. Converting a PDF means that it will no longer be a . PDF, and instead will start in a program other than a PDF reader.

For example, converting a PDF to a Microsoft Word file (DOC and DOCX) lets you start the file not only in Word, but also in other file editing programs like OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Using these types of apps to edit a converted PDF is probably a much more comfortable thing to do, compared to an unfamiliar PDF editor, like one of the programs I mentioned above.

If you instead need a non-PDF file to be a . PDF file, you can use a PDF creator. word file to pdf These types of tools can take things like images, eBooks, and Microsoft Word files, and export them as PDF, which enables them to be opened in a PDF or eBook reader.

Saving or exporting from a format to PDF can be accomplished using a free PDF creator. Some even serve as a PDF printer, allowing you to virtually "print" pretty much any file to some . PDF file. create pdf from word In reality, it's just a simple method to convert pretty much anything to PDF. Watch How to Print to PDF for a full look at these options.


A few of the programs from the links above may be utilised in either way, meaning you can use them to both convert PDFs to different formats as well as to make PDFs. Calibre is just another example of a completely free app that supports converting to and from an eBook format.

Additionally, lots of the apps mentioned also can combine multiple PDFs into one, extract out specific PDF pages, and save just the images from the PDF.

See these Free File Conversion Programs and Online Services for other ways to convert a PDF file to another file format, including image formats, HTML, SWF, MOBI, PDB, EPUB, TXT, along with others.


How to Secure a PDF

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Securing a PDF may include requiring a password to open it, as well as preventing someone from printing the PDF, copying its text,
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