MB-920 Free PDF - Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals Finance and Operations Apps (ERP) Updated: 2023

PDF to Word is one of the most frequently used search terms concerning PDFs; the reason is; that everybody wants to edit a PDF in a familiar format, and it is complicated to edit on a PDF. When people try to make changes in PDF files, they typically respond in two ways: they will look for a program that will allow them to edit the document directly, or they will attempt to convert the PDF to another file. There are simple online solutions if PDF editors don’t suit your needs. This article will cover the most popular and easy PDF-to-Word converters available online for free.

Here is the list of some of the best PDF to Word Converters For Windows PC. Since these are free services, you might face a limit on the PDF size. Hence it is recommended to use it for small files.

1. Adobe website
2. Microsoft Word
3. PDF to Doc
4. Zamzar
5. Small PDF

Try each to find out what works best for you, then choose one. Some tools may offer better formatting, while others may offer a larger file size.

1] Adobe website

Adobe Acrobat online converter is a quick and simple tool to convert a PDF file into a Word document. Drag and drop your PDF, and your Word document should be ready for download. Acrobat quickly converts PDF files to DOCX file format while keeping the format of the original documents. You can check out their PDF to Word converter in any web browser.

To convert a PDF file into a Microsoft Word document, follow these simple steps:

• Visit adobe.com
• Drag the PDF into the drop point or select a file.
• Choose the PDF that you wish to convert to a DOCX file.
• Observe as Acrobat immediately converts the File from a PDF to a Word document.
• Download the Word document after conversion.

2] Microsoft Word

Microsoft has a free PDF conversion feature that lets you save your documents in PDF format. So, you can open a PDF in Word to make the necessary edits required for your document. PDFs that are primarily text-based work best for this. Word won’t format PDFs of book chapters or documents that appear to be copies of manuscripts. Check out the following steps to edit PDF in Word.

• Open Word and select Open on the left pane.
• Find the PDF file you want to edit and press Open. Press OK to change your File into a Word document.
• Do the required changes in the document. Go to File> Click Save.
• Select your destination folder. Click on the drop-down box Save as type and choose PDF from the given list. Click Save.

In the converted document, some details may change—for example, line breaks or page breaks.

3] PDF to Doc

PDF to DOC converter enables you to save a PDF file as an editable document in Microsoft Word DOC format. It ensures better quality when compared to other tools. Both college students and professionals can easily use to tool to make edits. The following steps will guide you on uploading and converting a PDF to a Word document.

• As given in the image, go to the UPLOAD FILES button.
• You can select up to 20 PDF files you want to convert and wait for the conversion process to get over.
• Download the outputs, one File at a time or all of them simultaneously in a ZIP file by using the get ALL option.

4] Zamzar

Zamzar is another converter that can easily convert images or documents. Using Zamzar, it is possible to convert PDF files to a variety of other formats: PDF to BMP (Windows bitmap), PDF to CSV (Comma Separated Values), PDF to DWG (AutoCAD Drawing Database), etc. One of the methods listed below makes it simple to convert your files:

• By using the converting tool found on their homepage.
• By using their desktop application.
• By utilizing their email conversions service.

Follow the steps below to convert the file using Zamzar:

• Please select the file you wish to convert from wherever it is located on your computer by clicking the Add Files button in the first step of the conversion program.
• In the second step, choose a format from the drop-down menu, i.e., WORD
• Select Convert Now, which is Step 3.

Once your file has been converted, you can get it from our website. You can optionally supply an email address in Step 3 if you prefer to get a link to your converted file.

5] Small PDF

Small PDF is yet another converter that easily converts PDFs to Word docs. You can quickly convert PDF to Word with a few clicks and drag. There is no file size restriction, and using their service does not require registration. Their PDF to Word converter works well on Windows, Mac, or Linux. The free trial version is limited to daily conversions of up to two files. They also supply importance to privacy so that all files will be deleted forever from their servers after one hour.

Follow these steps given below to convert your files into Small PDFs.

• Drag your PDF or upload it by clicking CHOOSE FILES. Choose your File from its destination and click Open.
• A new page will open and show you two options: 1) Convert to Word and 2) Convert to Editable Word (OCR). The first option is free, and the second option requires payment. If you want a free trial, click on the first and choose options.
• Your PDF file will be converted into a Word doc and ready for editing.

Check out the online converter.

The main advantage of converting a PDF to Word is that you can directly edit the text on Word. Here, the benefit of an online PDF to Word converter comes to play because making changes to your PDF using an online PDF editor is not practical. Once a PDF has been converted to Word, adjustments can be made quickly using Word or other equivalent applications. You can also easily convert the edited Word document to PDF by choosing PDF format.

Thus, you can visit any website mentioned in the article, and that should get the job done.

How to Add a PDF to your Office file?

Insert a PDF file as an object to add it to your Word document. By doing this, the PDF effectively merges with the Word document. It implies that unless you link to the source PDF file, any changes you make to the source PDF file won’t be reflected in the embedded file in the Word document.

Open the Word document into which the PDF should be inserted. Select Insert > Object > Create from File. Find the PDF you wish to insert and click OK.

What are the restrictions of any PDF to Word Converter?

As a result of things being virtually printed onto a blank piece of paper to create PDF files, maintaining the original formatting of your PDF is a very challenging issue after converting it into a Word doc. There are no guidelines on where objects are placed on the page compared to most other file formats (such as papers, presentations, etc.)—because of this, converting PDFs to other file formats is quite challenging.

Microsoft has released a new set of Windows 11-based virtual machines you can get from the official website for free. "Windows 11 development environment," or WDE, as the name implies, is a free virtual machine with Windows 11 Enterprise and all the developer tools one may need to start making applications for Microsoft's operating system. Those include the following:

• Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition with UWP, .NET Desktop, Azure, and Windows App SDK for C# workloads enabled.
• Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 enabled with Ubuntu installed.
• Windows Terminal installed.
• Developer mode enabled (the recently announced Dev Home Preview app is not there yet).

Windows 11 development environment version 2307 is based on Windows 11 build 22621.1992, the latest stable Windows 11 release that includes Patch Tuesday updates for July 2023. Virtual machines are available in four formats: VMWare (supports Workstation Pro and Workstation Player), Hyper-V, VirtualBox, and Parallels. Downloading WDE in one of those formats lets you set up a Windows 11-based virtual machine with just a few clicks.

Still, several limitations are worth noting. Although Microsoft's virtual machines are free for get and use, they are only valid for 90 days. According to the official website, WDE version 2307 will expire on October 10, 2023 (expect a newer version with a new expiration date next month). Also, you cannot activate a WDE—Microsoft says these do not support activation with a product key. Finally, Windows 11 development environment is x86-only, and Microsoft does not plan to provide developers with an ARM version.

If you want to try Windows 11 development environment, head to the official website and click one of four available formats. Before installing, make sure you have a minimum of 8GB of RAM and 70GB of free disk space. Microsoft also provides "clean" Windows Enterprise evaluation images without extra software installed. You can get them here (Windows 11) and here (Windows 10).

In this post, we take a look at PDFill Free and Advanced PDF Utilities Free – free PDF Editor software. They can be used to manage daily PDF tasks such as splitting pages, converting PDF to text & converting images to PDF, or vice versa. With this free software, you can easily manage and Improve your PDF file. This software comes with a set of interesting and useful features that we will discuss in this post.

• Advanced PDF Utilities Free
• PDFill Free.

Advanced PDF Utilities Free

The software is elegantly designed with a user-friendly interface. The principle of the interface is taken from Microsoft Office; everything is aligned properly in the top Ribbon bar. There are total 9 tabs that contain all the features of the software. Let us discuss each tab one by one:

1. PDF Preview

Under this tab you can view a PDF file, apart from viewing you can even Print and Save your PDF file. This tab includes a basic PDF viewer with all the navigation functions such as Next Page, etc. One more feature that is available under this Tab is Document properties. With this option, you can edit the basic information of your PDF file, and also include your name or simply a description of the File.

2. PDF to Image

This tab is used to convert a PDF file into an image file. To convert your PDF into an image, what you need to do is simply set the starting and the ending page, select the image format, and resolution, and finally click on the “Convert PDF to Image” option. And your task is done!

Read: Best free PDF Voice Readers for Windows PC

3. PDF to Text

This tab is used to convert a PDF file into a Text File. The usage is the same as of the second tab (PDF to an image).  With this tab, you can even export your PDF file to Microsoft Word format.

4. PDF Merge

With this tab you can merge multiple PDF files into one single PDF file. The usage is very simple – you just need to select your multiple PDF files and click on the “Merge PDF” option, and the rest of the work is done by the software.

5. PDF Split

In the previous tab we merged multiple files. In this tab we can split a file into different multiple files. It offers the opposite functionality of the previous tab. For splitting a file, we need to select a page range. For example, if I want to split a file after every 5 pages, I will have to select my page range and click on “Split PDF” button. That’s all.

6. Scan PDF/JPG to PDF

This tab is used to scan a file into PDF file. I mean that you can choose an Image file or a PDF file and you can embed it into a new PDF file. Scanning can be even done from a hardware device such as Scanner. The results are real-time and are done with awesome quality.

7. OCR

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. Under this tab you can recognize characters from your PDF file and export them into a text file. This feature is very useful when you want something to be recognized from a handwritten source. OCR will recognize all the characters in your PDF file and it would make your task much easier. The program has a specialty in Optical Character Recognition.

8. Tools

The Tools tab contains some of the security tools which can be used to encrypt PDF file with a password or remove a password from a PDF file. You can even apply a digital signature to a PDF file from this tools tab.

9. Help

It views the basic info about the software and some of the basic FAQs that would help you when you use the program.

All this is available in Advanced PDF utilities free. Click here to get it.

PDFill PDF Tools is a free PDF editing tool that has many PDF editing options! With PDFill you can just do anything with your Portable Document File. This free software includes many other small utilities that help you completely optimize and enhance the quality of your PDF files. PDFill comprises of 3 utilities into it.

PDFill Free PDF Tools

With PDFill Tools, you can merge different PDF files into one file or you can simply split and reorder them. As far as security is concerned, with PDFill tools, you can even encrypt or decrypt a PDF file with a password. You can even manage the alignment of the pages and rotate or crop the pages of a PDF file with this free utility.

Reformatting multiple pages, adding headers and footers, Watermarks, is just an easy game for this software. Apart from these features, there are many conversion options available. They are:

• Convert from images to PDF
• Convert from PDF to images
• Convert filed operations to PDF
• Convert from postscript to PDF.

If your PDF file lacks information on it, you can add the PDF information to a file. And last but not the least, an important feature of this PDF tool is that it lets you create transparent images from a PDF file, which means that you can save your entire PDF document to the PNG formatted transparent images.

PDFill Image and PDF Writer is a free PDF printing and Image printing utility that lets you create PDF files and Image files form different applications running on your Windows PC.

If you are looking for complete PDF freeware for your Windows, I would like to recommend you all this utility. This combination of three different PDF utilities is a one-stop solution to your PDF demands.

Click here to get PDFill. You have to look for the link to get the free version.

“Microsoft is building the infrastructure to support AI innovation, and we are reimagining every aspect of our datacenters to meet the needs of our customers,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud + AI Group. “At the scale we operate, it’s important for us to optimize and integrate every layer of the infrastructure stack to maximize performance, diversify our supply chain and supply customers infrastructure choice.”

Optimizing every layer of the stack

Chips are the workhorses of the cloud. They command billions of transistors that process the vast streams of ones and zeros flowing through datacenters. That work ultimately allows you to do just about everything on your screen, from sending an email to generating an image in Bing with a simple sentence.

Much like building a house lets you control every design choice and detail, Microsoft sees the addition of homegrown chips as a way to ensure every element is tailored for Microsoft cloud and AI workloads. The chips will nestle onto custom server boards, placed within tailor-made racks that fit easily inside existing Microsoft datacenters. The hardware will work hand in hand with software – co-designed together to unlock new capabilities and opportunities.

The end goal is an Azure hardware system that offers maximum flexibility and can also be optimized for power, performance, sustainability or cost, said Rani Borkar, corporate vice president for Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure (AHSI).

“Software is our core strength, but frankly, we are a systems company. At Microsoft we are co-designing and optimizing hardware and software together so that one plus one is greater than two,” Borkar said. “We have visibility into the entire stack, and silicon is just one of the ingredients.”

At Microsoft Ignite, the company also announced the general availability of one of those key ingredients: Azure Boost, a system that makes storage and networking faster by taking those processes off the host servers onto purpose-built hardware and software.

To complement its custom silicon efforts, Microsoft also announced it is expanding industry partnerships to provide more infrastructure options for customers. Microsoft launched a preview of the new NC H100 v5 Virtual Machine Series built for NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, offering greater performance, reliability and efficiency for mid-range AI training and generative AI inferencing. Microsoft will also add the latest NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPU to its fleet next year to support larger model inferencing with no increase in latency.

The company also announced it will be adding AMD MI300X accelerated VMs to Azure. The ND MI300 virtual machines are designed to accelerate the processing of AI workloads for high range AI model training and generative inferencing, and will feature AMD’s latest GPU, the AMD Instinct MI300X.

By adding first party silicon to a growing ecosystem of chips and hardware from industry partners, Microsoft will be able to offer more choice in price and performance for its customers, Borkar said.

“Customer obsession means we provide whatever is best for our customers, and that means taking what is available in the ecosystem as well as what we have developed,” she said. “We will continue to work with all of our partners to deliver to the customer what they want.”

Co-evolving hardware and software

The company’s new Maia 100 AI Accelerator will power some of the largest internal AI workloads running on Microsoft Azure. Additionally, OpenAI has provided feedback on Azure Maia and Microsoft’s deep insights into how OpenAI’s workloads run on infrastructure tailored for its large language models is helping inform future Microsoft designs.

“Since first partnering with Microsoft, we’ve collaborated to co-design Azure’s AI infrastructure at every layer for our models and unprecedented training needs,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. “We were excited when Microsoft first shared their designs for the Maia chip, and we’ve worked together to refine and test it with our models. Azure’s end-to-end AI architecture, now optimized down to the silicon with Maia, paves the way for training more capable models and making those models cheaper for our customers.”

The Maia 100 AI Accelerator was also designed specifically for the Azure hardware stack, said Brian Harry, a Microsoft technical fellow leading the Azure Maia team. That vertical integration – the alignment of chip design with the larger AI infrastructure designed with Microsoft’s workloads in mind – can yield huge gains in performance and efficiency, he said.

“Azure Maia was specifically designed for AI and for achieving the absolute maximum utilization of the hardware,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Cobalt 100 CPU is built on Arm architecture, a type of energy-efficient chip design, and optimized to deliver greater efficiency and performance in cloud native offerings, said Wes McCullough, corporate vice president of hardware product development. Choosing Arm technology was a key element in Microsoft’s sustainability goal. It aims to optimize “performance per watt” throughout its datacenters, which essentially means getting more computing power for each unit of energy consumed. 

“The architecture and implementation is designed with power efficiency in mind,” he said. “We’re making the most efficient use of the transistors on the silicon. Multiply those efficiency gains in servers across all our datacenters, it adds up to a pretty big number.”  

Custom hardware, from chip to datacenter

Before 2016, most layers of the Microsoft cloud were bought off the shelf, said Pat Stemen, partner program manager on the AHSI team. Then Microsoft began to custom build its own servers and racks, driving down costs and giving customers a more consistent experience. Over time, silicon became the primary missing piece.

The ability to build its own custom silicon allows Microsoft to target certain qualities and ensure that the chips perform optimally on its most important workloads. Its testing process includes determining how every single chip will perform under different frequency, temperature and power conditions for peak performance and, importantly, testing each chip in the same conditions and configurations that it would experience in a real-world Microsoft datacenter.

The silicon architecture unveiled today also lets Microsoft not only enhance cooling efficiency but optimize the use of its current datacenter assets and maximize server capacity within its existing footprint, the company said.

For example, no racks existed to house the unique requirements of the Maia 100 server boards. So Microsoft built them from scratch. These racks are wider than what typically sits in the company’s datacenters. That expanded design provides ample space for both power and networking cables, essential for the unique demands of AI workloads.

Such AI tasks come with intensive computational demands that consume more power. Traditional air-cooling methods fall short for these high-performance chips. As a result, liquid cooling – which uses circulating fluids to dissipate heat – has emerged as the preferred solution to these thermal challenges, ensuring they run efficiently without overheating.

But Microsoft’s current datacenters weren’t designed for large liquid chillers. So it developed a “sidekick” that sits next to the Maia 100 rack. These sidekicks work a bit like a radiator in a car. Cold liquid flows from the sidekick to cold plates that are attached to the surface of Maia 100 chips. Each plate has channels through which liquid is circulated to absorb and transport heat. That flows to the sidekick, which removes heat from the liquid and sends it back to the rack to absorb more heat, and so on.

The tandem design of rack and sidekick underscores the value of a systems approach to infrastructure, McCullough said. By controlling every facet — from the low-power ethos of the Cobalt 100 chip to the intricacies of datacenter cooling — Microsoft can orchestrate a harmonious interplay between each component, ensuring that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts in reducing environmental impact.

Microsoft has shared its design learnings from its custom rack with industry partners and can use those no matter what piece of silicon sits inside, said Stemen. “All the things we build, whether infrastructure or software or firmware, we can leverage whether we deploy our chips or those from our industry partners,” he said. “This is a choice the customer gets to make, and we’re trying to provide the best set of options for them, whether it’s for performance or cost or any other dimension they care about.”

Microsoft plans to expand that set of options in the future; it is already designing second-generation versions of the Azure Maia AI Accelerator series and the Azure Cobalt CPU series. The company’s mission remains clear, Stemen said: optimize every layer of its technological stack, from the core silicon to the end service.

“Microsoft innovation is going further down in the stack with this silicon work to ensure the future of our customers’ workloads on Azure, prioritizing performance, power efficiency and cost,” he said. “We chose this innovation intentionally so that our customers are going to get the best experience they can have with Azure today and in the future.”

Related resources:

Read more: Microsoft delivers purpose-built cloud infrastructure in the era of AI

Read more: Azure announces new AI optimized VM series featuring AMD’s flagship MI300X GPU

Read more: Introducing Azure NC H100 v5 VMs for mid-range AI and HPC workloads

Learn more: Microsoft Ignite

Top image: A technician installs the first server racks containing Microsoft Azure Cobalt 100 CPUs at a datacenter in Quincy, Washington. It’s the first CPU designed by Microsoft for the Microsoft Cloud. Photo by John Brecher for Microsoft.

The titular office suite, and one that just about everyone knows, called Microsoft Office, includes the renowned word processor Microsoft Word. But with the recent versions of its software, Microsoft has migrated to the cloud. Microsoft Word is a versatile and capable word processor that’s essential for typing and editing written documents, among other things (and there are a lot of things you probably didn’t know you could do in Microsoft Word). Microsoft Office is paid software, however, Word is included, and for some, the cost may seem high even with some of the best Microsoft Office deals floating around. So, if you’re wondering if there’s a Microsoft Word free trial or any other way to get it for free, read on to find out.

Is there a Microsoft Word free trial?

Microsoft Word is actually part of the company’s wider Office app suite. Now known simply as Microsoft 365 (formerly Microsoft Office), Microsoft’s enterprise software is available in a number of different packages that are now subscription-based; the company has retired the older bundles that were available for a one-time payment. That means if you want a Microsoft Word free trial, you’ll need to sign up for the Microsoft 365 trial, which includes the Word app along with Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and Editor.

The good news is that the Microsoft 365 free trial gives you a month of service. That’s plenty of time to enjoy Microsoft Word for free, as well as to try out the rest of the Microsoft 365 apps so you can decide whether you want to pay for it after your trial period is up. You do need to provide your credit card information upfront, though, and it’s, of course, up to you to cancel your subscription before the trial period is over if you don’t want to be billed the annual subscription rate.

Save on everything from laptops and tablets, to coffee makers and air purifiers, and a whole host of Apple tech like iPad, Apple Watch and even the latest M3 MacBooks, as well as smart home essentials like the Amazon Echo and smart bulbs.

Can you get Microsoft Word for free?

Alternatively, you might consider the Adobe free trial or the Adobe Photoshop free trial if you have any illustration or design work that needs to be done. Then, of course, there’s the Quickbooks free trial if you have any financial or accounting work you need done. It’s always good to know what else is out there, particularly when it comes to affordable software options.

Are there any Microsoft Word deals?

If you’ve used up your Microsoft Word trial and you’re ready to buy, you might want to actually cancel your subscription rather than let yourself be billed for the full retail price. Microsoft Office deals abound, with retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, and others offering fairly frequent markdowns on Microsoft’s software suite. Typically, you’ll see savings of $10 to $30 on your first year of service for the Microsoft 365 Personal, Business, and Family suites. Other bargains to look out for include package deals that bundle Microsoft 365 with other software; it’s frequently bundled with security software from brands like McAfee, AVG, and Norton.

Editors' Recommendations

Office Insiders trialing preview updates on iOS and iPadOS can get the latest Microsoft 365 app version with a great new feature: PDF Merge. Now you can grab several PDF documents and fuse them into one large file without downloading extra PDF managers.

You can try PDF merging in the Microsoft 365 application by downloading version 2.76 or newer (build 23062603). Next, head to the PDF toolbox, select the merge command, pick the files you need, and tap continue. Arrange the files or add more, then tap Merge and watch the app doing its software magic. After that, the Microsoft 365 app will automatically save the merged PDF file on your device, allowing you to find and retrieve it for further use or processing using existing PDF capabilities.

It is worth noting that the App Store on iOS and iPadOS is full of PDF-editing apps with document merging capabilities. Those features often require signing up for a paid subscription, and Microsoft is no exception—PDF merging is only available for Microsoft 365 subscribers. You can get and use the app for free, but attempting to fuse two or more PDF documents into one will result in Microsoft politely asking you to pay.

The updated Microsoft 365 app for iOS is rolling out to insiders gradually. Microsoft practices such an approach to ensure things are working smoothly. It is weird to see extra caution in the program for testing preview updates, but it is the sad reality of Microsoft's insider program.

Merging PDF files is not the only new PDF-related feature in the Microsoft 365 app. Earlier this month, the company introduced the ability to extract separate pages from PDF documents on Android. You can learn more about the feature in our dedicated coverage. Those willing to become Microsoft 365 insiders can visit the program's official website to get started.

It’s likely that you regularly come across or work with PDF files—they’re ubiquitous in our modern cross-platform world. Most of the time, when viewing a PDF, you can enjoy free software that allows you to read or comment on these files. But what if you need to edit them as well? That’s where a PDF editor comes in.

The best PDF editors allows you to edit, create, alter, and convert PDF files just like you would with any other text document. Adobe Acrobat is the most famous option for most people. But while it’s excellent both in features and utility, it’s also pretty expensive. Thankfully, in recent years a whole host of third-party PDF editors have sprung up in order to provide less expensive alternatives.

Here at PCWorld we’ve tested many of these top PDF editors and curated a list of the very best. With different use cases in mind, we’ve included picks for the best overall, best budget option, and even a recommendation for the best free PDF editor—because sometimes you just don’t want to pay for the basics. Check out our recommendations below to find the best PDF editor for you.

Update 11/02/2023: Check out our latest review of PDFgear. This PDF editor is one of the most sophisticated free editing tools we’ve ever seen with pro-level features and an AI co-pilot to help streamline your workflow.

A word about online PDF editors

Why spend a chunk of change on a desktop editor when free online PDF editors abound? The simple answer is because you get what you pay for. Generally, free online editors will let you add text and comments, merge and split documents, and convert files to and from PDF. With rare exception, however, they won’t let you edit existing text and many have file-size and page-volume restrictions. And a lot of them will watermark your edited document. For these reasons, web PDF editors are best reserved for simple, fast editing jobs. Call in these big dogs for anything more demanding.

What to look for in a PDF editor

PDF editors come in a variety of flavors, offering varying feature sets—from basic functionality to power-user tools. It’s important to know what features best match your workflow before you commit to a PDF editor.

Create, convert, and export PDFs

The most fundamental function of a PDF editor is to make PDFs, either from scratch, scanned hard copies, or by converting digital documents. A good PDF editor should be able to transform a variety of file types—from Microsoft Office formats to images to HTML—and do so seamlessly, preserving the original formatting. It should also include OCR technology to make the PDF text searchable and editable. Likewise, a good PDF editor must be able to export PDFs into other editable formats such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, HTML, or plain text, maintaining the original files hyperlinks, images, and other elements.

Content editing

Another bit of magic that PDF editors unlock is the ability to modify text; insert, resize, and move images; and reorganize pages in the PDF. A good one will perform these tasks as easily as in a text document or slide deck, allowing in-line editing, dragging-and dropping graphics, and adding or removing hyperlinks.

Review and annotate

A good PDF editor should also let you or anyone else using it add comments and other annotations to PDF files during review. It should have tools to mark up both text documents and graphic-heavy files like webpages. Common options include sticky notes, callout boxes, highlighting, freehand drawing tools, and stamps with messages like “approved,” “revised,” and “confidential.”

Security

All businesses deal with documents containing sensitive data. Look for a PDF editor that includes security features that allow access for authorized eyes only. Good options will usually offer several levels of security, including password protection, permissions setting, and content redaction, which “blacks out” selected text and images. Most PDF editors will also offer one or more ways to electronically sign documents.

Mobile support

While deep PDF editing is best done on a desktop, it’s nice to be able to review and annotate files when you’re out and about. While PDFs can typically be reviewed in any PDF reader or editor, regardless of which one they were created in, consider looking for an editor that has a dedicated mobile app, is optimized for mobile devices, or allows cloud access to features through a mobile browser.

One of the great things about a PDF is that it can be read and edited in any PDF program regardless of which one it was created in. So beyond the features outlined here, let your personal preferences guide you in making your decision.

The best free PDF reader options provide not only the capability to view documents but also tools for editing and collaboration, without any hidden costs. 

While using a browser remains a straightforward method for online PDF viewing, its functionalities often stop at merely opening files. For those seeking enhanced control over both online and offline PDFs, the best PDF editors and best free PDF editors offer robust features that go beyond just displaying a document.