I need a software package that will let me edit an existing pdf file. What are your recommendations?

5/30/2006 7:28:57 PM

http://www.pdf995.com

5/30/2006 7:30:12 PM

acrobat pro is 69.95 at the bookstore, standard is just 55.95. that's pretty decent at it.

[Edited on May 30, 2006 at 7:57 PM. Reason : ]

5/30/2006 7:56:24 PM

Yeah, if you are a student. Guess what...I'm not. Sucks for me, doesn't it?

5/30/2006 8:06:48 PM

Yes.

5/30/2006 8:28:36 PM

i'll buy it for you for an additional $5

or, i'll buy it for you, charge you less than it costs, and you fix the reverse-light sensor on my gear box

5/30/2006 8:45:14 PM

do they check student ID when you purchase?

if so get a tww kid to buy for you

5/30/2006 8:50:09 PM

yeah they do, they check for a valid ncsu ID. they don't have time to verify enrollement or anything, just make sure the ID isn't expired.

5/30/2006 8:56:33 PM

so what will acrobat do that my suggestion won't?

5/30/2006 9:12:13 PM

^

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1681531,00.asp

and

http://www.download.com/PDF995/3003-6675_4-10530662.html?tag=qf_edstars

Those explain it pretty well. If he's interested in metadata or encryption then it's not going to do it for him. For free, pdf995 is wonderful. Acrobat pro and standard are much better though. They've got better interfaces, more options, and interact well with adobe's suite of products. Is it worth the extra 50 bucks or so (considering it's 10 bucks to get rid of the adds and popups in pdf995)? Depends on how much this guy has to use it. If it's a one time thing, obviously not. If he's got to edit a LOT of pdf files, then he should probably go with acrobat if he can get it at the huge discount.

Don't think I'm competing with you for "best suggestion" or anything.

[Edited on May 30, 2006 at 9:38 PM. Reason : ]

5/30/2006 9:36:12 PM

http://www.cutepdf.com

5/31/2006 11:08:35 AM

^yeah CutePDF is a good free program for printing documents to PDF...take a Word doc, Excel Doc, whatever and print it to CutePDF and it will pop up a dialog box asking where to save the .PDF file

however, it seems like zxappeal wants to "edit an existing pdf file"

hate to break it to you, but you wont be able to truly edit any pdf file as if it were a word document, for example...with the full version of Adobe Acrobat you can change words but it will literally cross out the old words and be extremely apparent that changes were made

so if you have a document and want to make some seemless changes, well thats kind of impossible since PDFs are made with the intention of NOT being editable

5/31/2006 11:24:24 AM

Tree...you are an idiot. There are several programs out there that will convert PDF to word or any other type of file that you wish....Most of them are not free. And no, they won't look like sh it. Check out http://www.softseek.com and just search pdf. PM me if you get desperate and I will take care of it for you. It can be done...just takes a little time.

5/31/2006 12:16:13 PM

softseek.com, eh? might as well post google.com since you didnt name a single program that allows you to edit pdf files

5/31/2006 12:22:40 PM

well...try SolidPDF or
http://www.pdf-to-html-word.com/
http://www.eprintdriver.com/to_word/PDF_to_MS_Word.html

I have always used SolidPDF.

5/31/2006 12:30:31 PM

yeah i have used some program like that, not sure the name, that converts pdf to word but it was never really perfect...always had to do lots of re-alignment and it seemed to screw up graphics...but i'm sure there are better programs now

i just know with ADOBE ACROBAT you cant do "hidden edits" of PDF files but preciate the info

5/31/2006 12:56:00 PM

^ not nescessarily true. it depends on how the pdf was generated. if the text in the file is entered in such a way that acrobat recognizes it as text, you can edit it quite well with acrobat pro.

5/31/2006 5:59:29 PM

http://www.primopdf.com works pretty good for me.

5/31/2006 8:15:02 PM

Adobe Illustrator

-ZiP!-

5/31/2006 9:27:55 PM

http://foxitsoftware.com/

6/1/2006 1:17:32 AM

illustrator ftw, depending on if it was saved as a layered pdf - if it's just a regular acrobat pdf then even illustrator is useless

but if you 'get' the full version of acrobat, you can essentially just rip out all the elements with either the text/table copy or image snapshot tools and recreate the doc in word so you can edit it

[Edited on June 1, 2006 at 2:41 AM. Reason : .]

6/1/2006 2:41:07 AM