Have you ever come across correct or poorly formatted text in an Acrobat PDF file? Do you know you can change it? Adobe Acrobat's Touch-up tool will help you fix these errors. Learn how to use it in this article.
Steps
Method 1 of 4: Edit text with Acrobat XI Pro
Step 1. Open Adobe Acrobat
Open the file you want to edit.
Step 2. Expand the side toolbar
At the top of the document, click the Tools button. A sidebar will appear. Click on Edit content to expand that field, and then click on Edit text and images.
Now the editable text will be highlighted
Step 3. Edit the text
Select the text you want to edit in the usual way: click to insert the cursor, click and drag to select multiple characters, double-click to select an entire word or triple-click for the entire block of text.
Step 4. Arrange the text blocks
In Acrobat XI, text now flows as expected. If you add or remove a significant amount of text, you will need to arrange the text blocks to fit them into the document.
Step 5. Click a text block to select it
It will be highlighted by a blue frame, with blue handles on the corners and in the center.
- To adjust the size of the text block, click on one of the blue handles, and drag as needed. To adjust the position of a text block, place the cursor on a row or column. The cursor will turn into a crosshair, and you can drag the text wherever you want.
- Note the green guidelines - they will help keep your text aligned with the rest on the page you are editing. If you hold down the Shift key, the text will align vertically or horizontally.
Step 6. Change the font
Acrobat XI also makes it easy to change font attributes. Select the word, phrase or block of text you want to change, then adjust it as you see fit from the panel Format.
Step 7. Don't forget to save your work
Method 2 of 4: Older versions of Acrobat Pro / Adobe Acrobat 8
Step 1. Determine how much text you need to edit
- The next steps for Basic Editing only apply if you need to add or replace words, and don't need the more advanced text editing options.
- The next steps for Advanced Editing are fine for text edits that require additional tools such as changing the font style.
Step 2. Not all PDF documents are editable
There are some documents that cannot be edited, even with Acrobat Pro.
Method 3 of 4: Basic Modifications
Step 1. Open Adobe Acrobat
Step 2. Open the document that contains the text you want to edit
Step 3. Select the Touch Up Text tool
Click on the menu Tools and select Advanced editing> Text retouch tool from the menu.
Step 4. Wait for the editor to initialize
It should only take a few moments.
Step 5. Select the word or phrase you need to edit
Double-click the text or click and drag the text to highlight the sentence.
Step 6. Type the text you want to replace
Method 4 of 4: Advanced Edits
Step 1. Open Adobe Acrobat
Step 2. Open the document that contains the text that needs to be edited
Step 3. Select the Edit Text tool
Click on the menu Tools and select Advanced changes> Text editing tool.
Step 4. Wait for the editor to initialize
It should only take a few moments.
Step 5. Select the word or phrase you need to edit
Double-click the text or click and drag the text to highlight the sentence.
Step 6. Right-click on the selected text
Step 7. Select Properties from the menu
- You can change the font by clicking on the drop-down menu at the top of the dialog box and selecting the one you would like to use.
- You can change the font size by clicking on the "Font size" box and entering the desired value.
- You can change the font color by selecting the "Fill" box and setting a new color.
- You can also make other changes, such as the spacing of the character, of the words, the horizontal resizing, the color of the outline (useful for highlighting a sentence, since there is no possibility to insert italics or bold), its width and shifting the baseline.
- You can also insert the font into the document, however for most documents this is not necessary.
Advice
- If the document has been scanned and has not been saved in an editable text format, you will not be able to edit the text. However, you will be able to post a comment on the text, after you have done an OCR (text recognition) scan of the document.
- The Edit Text tool is not needed for WordArt images, as they are images, not text, and Acrobat will not recognize them as "text".
- The Edit Text tool was already included in Adobe Acrobat version 6, and has been available in all versions (including Standard, Pro and Suite) ever since. However, it was removed from Acrobat XI.
