How to overwrite on PDF

Have you been asked to edit the content of a PDF file and, not having Adobe Acrobat installed on your PC, you don’t know how to do it? Do not worry. To edit PDF documents you don’t necessarily need advanced (and expensive) solutions like Adobe Acrobat. You can resort to much more affordable solutions, in some cases even free, which allow you to freely edit the content of PDF files.

Whether you need to add a small text to a PDF or rewrite entire paragraphs of it, with the software that I am about to recommend you will be able to easily achieve your goal. And if you don’t feel like downloading new programs on your PC, no problem, you can get the same result even with online services that work directly from the browser and with convenient apps for smartphones and tablets.

In short: you just have to choose the solution that seems to you best suited to your needs and use it by following the instructions on how to overwrite on PDF that you find below. The PDFs you will get will be perfectly compatible with all PDF reading software and devices (PC, smartphone, tablet and so on). Happy reading and good work!

Go now to ▶ ︎ Overwrite to PDF from PC | Overwrite to PDF Online | App to overwrite on PDF

Overwrite to PDF from PC

If you are looking for a way to overwrite PDF using your PC, here are a number of software that should be right for you, both free and paid.

Microsoft Word (Windows / Mac)

If you have Microsoft Office installed on your computer, you can edit PDF files using Microsoft Word , the word processing software included in the suite.

To write to a PDF file using Microsoft Word – and possibly modify the texts already present in the document – all you have to do is start the software in question, click on the File button located at the top left, select the Open item from the bar left side and click the Browse button to select the document to edit.

At this point, answer OK to the warning that appears on the screen and edit your PDF just as if you were editing any Word file. When the operation is complete, choose whether to export the document as a Word file by selecting the Save As item from the File menu , or as PDF, by selecting the Export item from the same menu.

Note: PDF file support is only available in Office versions 2013 or higher. If you have an older version of the suite and want to know how to upgrade to the newer ones, read my tutorial on how to download Word .

LibreOffice (Windows / Mac / Linux)

If you don’t have Microsoft Office installed on your computer and you don’t intend to install it, you can safely contact LibreOffice . In case you have never heard of it, LibreOffice is a free and open source productivity suite – a free alternative to Microsoft Office – which includes programs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and databases. It is compatible with all major computer operating systems: Windows, macOS and Linux and also supports PDF files, both inbound and outbound.

To download LibreOffice on your PC, connect to its official website and click on the  Download version xx button . If you are using a Mac, also click on the Translated User Interface button  to download the LibreOffice Italian translation package (which is included “as standard” in the Windows version of the suite). At the end of the download you have to proceed differently depending on the operating system you use.

If you are using a Windows PC, open the LibreOffice installation package ( LibreOffice_xx_Win_x86.msi ) and complete the setup by clicking on Next twice in a row and then on Install , Yes and Finish .

If you are using a Mac, open the  dmg package that contains LibreOffice, drag the suite icon into the MacOS Applications folder and open the software by right clicking on its icon and selecting the Open item from the menu that appears the first time avoiding that macOS blocks its execution because it comes from non-certified developers).

At this point, close LibreOffice, open the  dmg package that contains the Italian language pack for the suite, right-click on the LibreOffice Language Pack icon and select the Open item from the menu that opens. Then press the Install button   twice in a row and, if you are told that you do not have high enough privileges to continue, click the Yes button  , identify me to authenticate (by entering the password of your user account on macOS).

Now you can take action and edit your PDFs with LibreOffice. The steps to take are the same on all operating systems.

To import a PDF file into LibreOffice, open the suite using its icon on the desktop (Windows) or in the LaunchPad (macOS), click on the Open file button located in the left sidebar and select the document to edit. Draw , the drawing application included in LibreOffice, will start automatically .

Then click on the portion of text to edit and freely change the content of the document according to your needs. When the operation is complete, select the Export in PDF format item from the File menu (top left) and you can export the file again in PDF format.

Overwrite to PDF online

Don’t feel like installing new programs on your PC or can’t you do it due to restrictions imposed by the system administrator? No problem. As already mentioned above, there are convenient online services that allow you to overwrite PDFs directly from the browser: here are some of the most interesting.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud storage service offered by Google within which you can find online applications for processing documents, spreadsheets, forms and presentations. By loading a PDF file on it, you can turn it into a text document and edit it freely, a bit like in Word and LibreOffice.

To use the PDF editing feature included in Google Drive, connect to the service and log in using your Google account . Then drag the PDF to edit into the browser window and wait a few seconds for the file to be uploaded.

At this point, right-click on the PDF document to be edited (in the main Google Drive screen), select the item  Open with> Google Documents  from the menu that opens and the Google Drive editor will automatically open with all the functions to edit the PDF. Once you’ve finished editing, you’ll be able to export the file as a Word, LibreOffice or PDF document using any of the options available in the File> Download As menu (top left).

Word Online

Microsoft also offers an online version of its productivity suite: it is Office Online that can be used for free without signing up for special subscriptions and works with all popular browsers.

To edit a PDF with the online version of Word, connect to the main page of OneDrive (Microsoft’s cloud storage service), log in with your Microsoft account and drag the PDF to edit into the browser window.

When upload is complete, click on the thumbnail of the document to be edited, select the Open in Word online item from the Open in menu located at the top left and wait a few seconds for the file to be imported into the online version of Word.

At this point, press the Edit in Word button located at the top right, answer Convert and Edit to the alerts that appear on the screen and edit the PDF according to your needs using all the tools made available to you by Office Online.

When you are satisfied with the result, click on the File button located at the top left, select the Save As item from the left sidebar and choose whether to download the document as a Word file or a PDF file .

PDF Pro

PDF Pro is an online service that allows you to edit PDFs by adding writings, highlights and other elements to them. It can be used without registering but in its free basic version it allows you to edit a maximum number of 3 PDFs per month. The Pro version costs 41.88 euros per year.

To edit a PDF with PDF Pro, linked to the home page of the latter and drag the document to be edited in the appropriate box located at the bottom left. Then click on the name of the document to edit, press the Edit button located at the top left and select the Text tool from the PDF Pro toolbar to apply the desired changes to the document.

Unfortunately you cannot directly edit the text portions contained in PDFs, but using the Erase tool it is possible to erase certain parts of the document and rewrite them using the Text tool .

When you are satisfied with the result, to save your edited PDF, first click on the Save button located at the top right and then on the Export button that appears next to it.

App to overwrite on PDF

Would you like to be able to work on your PDFs directly from your smartphone or tablet? No problem. I know some apps that might be right for you.

• Foxit PDF ( Android / iOS / Windows Phone )– one of the best free PDF viewers available. It also includes numerous editing features, including the option to add custom text to PDFs. To recall it, just press the Comment icon located at the bottom. It also supports cloud storage services. To avoid sending anonymous usage statistics, the specific function must be deactivated during the initial setup of the app.
• AndrOpen Office ( Android )– this is a perfect port of OpenOffice for Android. In case you’ve never heard of it, OpenOffice is a free, open source productivity suite available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It’s the same software that LibreOffice is based on, so it offers everything you need to edit PDF files. It’s free, although some add-ons may be paid for. To activate the PDF import you need to download a special free plugin .
• Polaris Office ( Android / iOS )– a productivity suite with support for PDF files. You can use it for free, but to unlock the PDF editing functions you need to purchase its full version which costs € 4.19 / month or € 29.99 / year.
• PDF Expert ( iOS )– one of the best applications for editing PDF files on iOS devices. It allows you to add text, highlights and other elements to PDFs, but not to modify the text already present in them. It costs 9.99 euros.
• PDF Office ( iOS )– this is an app developed by the same software house as PDF Expert (Readdle) that allows you to edit PDFs in 360 degrees, altering existing content or adding new ones. It costs 4.99 euros / month or 39.99 euros / year after the first 15 days of free trial and works only on iPad. In the mobile field it is difficult to find better!

Common problems: text not recognized

Some PDFs are not recognized as documents, but as images and you can’t edit them? Unfortunately, these are documents that have not been scanned correctly: they have been scanned without recognizing the writing characters and therefore are “seen” by the computer as images rather than text documents. To solve the problem you need to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software , that is a program that scans the images contained in PDFs and transforms them into editable texts by recognizing the writing characters. There are several you can contact, some even for free: take a look at my tutorial dedicated to OCR programs if you want to know more.