Working with PDFs is notoriously challenging. While most people don’t have problems viewing or sending them, editing or signing them can be frustrating (if not downright impossible using common sense approaches).
Fortunately, there are workarounds, which is what we discuss in this post. By the end of reading this article, you’ll be editing and signing PDFs as if you were in Microsoft Word.
Download And Use A PDF Editor
If you’re struggling with PDFs, your number one priority should be to download a PDF editor. These apps let you work inside Adobe’s format as if you were using a conventional productivity suite.
Both free and paid options are available. Free versions eliminate costs (obviously) but there are sometimes downsides. For instance, you might not get any enterprise support or the vendor may bar you from adding multiple accounts. Developers may also limit the number of documents you can edit in a given period, reducing utility if you have a high throughput of tasks.
Paid versions eliminate these problems but can be costly. You may need to pay a new subscription or fee for every account you add.
A better option might be to use a PDF SDK to create your own reader. These platforms enable you to build custom apps for reading, editing, and signing PDF files that suit your workflow. What’s more, once you complete them, they become your intellectual property so you can scale them infinitely without paying any royalties.
Use PDF Compression Techniques
You can also enhance your experience with PDF files by using advanced compression techniques that reduce the space they take up on your network. Even relatively short PDFs can be quite large relative to system storage, often forcing you to upgrade your hardware to accommodate them.
Compression apps combat this issue by cutting file sizes without harming fidelity. Algorithms eliminate any excess baggage, leaving you with only the useful remnants.
Multiple PDF compression suites are available, including SmallPDF and the cutely-named iLovePDF. However, you can also craft your own with the proper SDK to eliminate any vendor-imposed bottlenecks and gain infinite access to compression services.
Learn To Fill Out PDF Forms
Whether you run a business or not, the time will eventually come when someone sends you a PDF form and asks you to fill it out and send it back to them electronically. Again, though, you’re likely to run into problems. You can’t edit PDFs natively in the Adobe Reader.
Again, though, there are solutions. Good examples of software that lets you fill out forms include Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and Foxit PDF Reader. You can also try DocuSign.
What’s nice about these apps is that they turn the PDF form-filling experience into something that feels a bit like Microsoft Paint. It’s clunky (and it has to be, unfortunately), but it is also intuitive, helping you avoid steep learning curves that might flummox some staff members.
Another approach is to literally convert the PDF into a Word file, complete the edits, and then convert it back into a PDF. This multistep process might help you get more natural or professional-looking results.
Learn To Add Passwords To PDFs
Learning to add passwords to PDFs is one of the coolest ways to up your game. Limiting who can access them gives you far more optionality and control when sending private information or trying to manage team member permissions.
The good news is that you don’t usually need any third-party add-ons to protect PDFs with passcodes. Adobe provides this functionality natively.
To add a password, do the following:
- Open the PDF
- Go to Tools
- Click Protect >> Encrypt >> Encrypt with Password
- If prompted, click Yes to change the security requirements
- Enter your password
Leverage Cloud-Based PDF Services
You can also learn to leverage cloud-based PDF services. These tools offer features that let you edit, convert, and store PDFs through SaaS instead of downloading specific apps and installing them on your machines.
This approach can be highly beneficial for companies that lack on-site facilities to deal with large file volumes. It is also useful for firms operating BYOD policies that don’t want to clutter employees’ personal devices with essential work files.
Again, you will need to pay a prescription to access enterprise-level services. However, the productivity benefits can be substantial.
Learn To Fix Corrupted PDFs
You can also solve your PDF woes by learning to fix corrupted PDFs that just don’t seem to work yourself. As you probably know already, this file type can become corrupted for all sorts of reasons. Common issues include files failing to download properly, hard drives being unable to read the original material, and data loss during device transfers, so being able to fix them is a massive boon.
Several methods are available to fix corrupted PDFs. The easiest is to try opening the file with a different reader. Apps differ significantly when it comes to their ability to piece together broken files.
If that doesn’t work, you can try using PDF repair tools. These use various heuristics to look for errors in files and fix them so that regular readers will open them. Most operate in the cloud and require you to upload documents, which may pose a security risk. If that’s a problem for you, then you could try creating a repair app using SDK.
Seek Help From Online Communities
Finally, you can upgrade your PDF game and banish your woes by leveraging online communities. Adobe Acrobat and PDFs are well supported by web-based do-gooders who like finding solutions to common problems. Numerous forums exist across the internet, able to solve virtually any problem, or offer advice.
Wrapping Up
Ultimately, mastering PDFs requires substantial effort on your part to learn all the techniques and implement the solutions. However, once you have effective workflows in place, there’s virtually no problem you can’t solve. Putting in a little effort today can have profound effects on your long-term productivity and give you skills you can transfer to any role. It’s well worth the investment.
