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Editing a PDF file?

Discussion in 'Off Topic [BG]' started by Davidoc, Nov 20, 2005.

  1. Nov 20, 2005 #1
    Davidoc

    Davidoc

    Sep 2, 2000
    Northern VA and JMU
    Does anyone know if there are any free programs availalbe that can edit PDF files? I am looking to apply for a summer internship online, which requires you to fill out and A: E-mail or B: fax in the application. I would like this to look as professional as possible, and definitely type-written. How would you go about doing this? Editing the PDF file and e-mailing it would probably be the best option, but I do not know how to do this. How would you recommend filling out such an application?

    Thanks!
     
  2. Nov 20, 2005 #2
    chaosMK

    chaosMK

    May 26, 2005
    Albuquerque, NM
    Too much hip thrust
    Adobe Acrobat Pro can do this. It is a handy program- lets you easily convert Office files to PDF. It cost my office about $70. It cost me taking it home and bringing it back the next morning.
     
  3. Nov 20, 2005 #3
    Brad Johnson

    Brad Johnson Inactive

    Mar 8, 2000
    Gaithersburg, Md
    DR Strings
    Not sure I'm following the issue. A fax can be anything that you print. Do you have a .pdf that you want to change?

    If the form is in .pdf format, are you sure you can't open it up and type in the desired fields? If it's not editable I doubt anyone expects anyone else to print out a .pdf file and actually type on it... who has a typewriter? And no one would expect you to buy Acrobat to fill out an application.

    Most companies will accept a resume in Word format or even text format.

    I found a pretty cool program that's basically a PDF print driver... anything that I can print can instead be sent to a .pdf file. It's called Win2pdf.
     
  4. Nov 20, 2005 #4
    LajoieT

    LajoieT I won't let your shadow be my shade...

    Oct 7, 2003
    Western Massachusetts
    Even with the full version of Acrobat Pro (which IIRC is closer to around $250) editing PDF files is tricky and clumsy at best. I've done it quite a bit and one of the problems is you have no way of knowing what application the PDF came from. Word on a PC makes very different PDFs than Quark on a Mac does, and even with the full version of Acrobat, if you don't have the actual font used in the document in the area that you want to edit, you may not be able to change it. That said, BY FAR the easiest and most successfull program for editing an existing PDF file is Adobe Illustrator (CS or CS2) which uses PDF as it's native format, but if you aren't familiar with using it, it's not like typing in Word. In many situations I have found it easier in the long run to recreate the document rather than fighting with the PDF to make changes. You can cut and paste text blocks from Adobe Reader into Work (or whatever) and fix up the formatting and get real close. There are also quite a few applications that will convert PDFs to other files like Word or Excel. I've played with them and some work real well, but in the end I have Illustrator so I've had no need to convert something to Word, so if someone else needed that would be there issue, so there's never been a need for me to buy it.