How To Edit PDF Online Free Without Getting A Virus

We all know the pain and stress of having a PDF that requires editing, but all we can do is float the cursor over the document or get a million computer viruses while trying to edit online. Here are some free and safe online PDF editors.

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Several trustworthy and powerful PDF editors are on the internet, but most are hidden behind a steep paywall. Here’s a handful that we managed to use for free securely:

• PDF Candy
• PDF24 Creator
• PDF Bob
• Formswift
• Sejda
• Apple Preview
• PDFEscape
• Smallpdf
• Adobe Acrobat Reader DC
• Adios To Unedited PDFs

If you are surprised to see the all-powerful Adobe Acrobat on this list, you might find it helpful to learn other interesting things about our chosen editing tools.

PDF Candy

• Unlimited free access: Yes
• Upgradeable: No
• Original text editing: Yes
• Requires download: No

Like the beginning of all millennial novels, click on your preferred browser that’s drowning on your cluttered desktop. It’s perfectly okay if it’s Internet Explorer; we don’t judge here. Open Google

Type in “PDF Candy” or click on our hyperlink. The hyperlink will take you straight to PDF Candy’s home page. The landing page seems overwhelming because all of the editing functionality is shown as images. 

The editing options range from being able to merge PDF files, convert between Word and PDF, delete pages from the file, and split and move pages around. You can also edit, sign, lock, and unlock PDFs.

To edit, click on the editing option you need. Once you click, you are taken to a page with a big “Add file” button. Choose the PDF document you wish to edit from your desktop or from whichever computer folder you have it in.

You can also choose between the Google Drive or Dropbox button next to the file adding button to edit files you have saved on those platforms. You can also click and hold the file, drag it over the same space with the buttons, and drop it by releasing the clicking motion.

The website will open your file for preview, and you’ll see all the editing tools on the lefthand side of the document. Use them to edit your file. Once you have done all your changes, you can click on the “Export File” button on the bottom right of the screen. 

It will process the file and show you a “Download file” button which you can use to save it on your computer. You can also save straight to your Dropbox or Google Drive.

PDF24 Creator

• Unlimited free access: Yes
• Upgradeable: No
• Original text editing: Yes
• Requires download: No

Googling PDF24 Creator should return a couple of similar search results. Click only on pdf24 dot org. We can’t vouch for the many others that pop up. 

The immediate thing that shows up on the page is the download button. You can, but you don’t need to. Similar to PDF Candy, you can do all of the edits online. 

Scroll down to the part of the website with all the mini images. The website’s editing tools are shown as pictures with a description. Editing options range from being able to merge, split, compress, and edit PDFS to being able to add watermarks and redact PDFs.

Hover your cursor over the option you are interested in and click on it once the option’s square is on glows orange-ish. The page you should be taken to has a giant “Choose file” that sits on a rectangle with a dotted outline. 

You can open the file you wish to edit from the “Choose file” button or drag and drop it into the dotted rectangle. Your file will open, and you can press the top-right floppy disk icon to save it on your desktop or any other folder once you are done with it. 

The appearance of a floppy disk on this software’s website alone has my upvote.

PDF Bob

• Unlimited free access: Yes
• Upgradeable: No
• Original text editing: No
• Requires download: No

PDF Bob should be your uncle. This website works and works well. The home page has a giant “Start editing PDF” button. It can’t be more evident than that.

The software effortlessly allows you to edit, annotate, create, and manage PDFs. Clicking on the editing button brings up an “Upload file” page. You can either press the rectangle or drag and drop the file you wish to edit over it. 

Once uploaded, the file should open immediately, and you get a left adjusted column with all the options. You can sign, highlight, and add comments using these icons. 

You can also toggle around an annotate, edit, and manage pages tabs over the top center of the screen. The tab to manage the document lets you move pages around and add and delete them. You can add pages from other documents.

The website allows you to export the files as PDFs, JPGs, or PNGs. That’s it, Bob’s your uncle.

Formswift

• Unlimited free access: Yes
• Upgradeable: No
• Original text editing: No
• Requires download: No

Formswift might be the tool you need, and we saved it for last. We love the tension. The landing page doesn’t waste your time because it gets straight to the point with a massive rectangle on the left side of the page.

You can drag and drop the file you wish to edit or choose files on your laptop. The file opens loads and opens almost immediately. The top bar of editing options is few and simple, but this simplicity is endearing.

You can erase, redact, highlight, add text, add images, and sign. After completing your fantastic editing job, you can press the download button at the top.

Sejda

• Unlimited free access: No
• Upgradeable: Yes
• Original text editing: Yes
• Requires download: No

Sejda is another whole company with tiny people behind the screen. The home page is clean, and scrolling just a little down show you all the website’s editing options.

The standard PDF editing options allow you to delete pages, split, and extract pages, among many other options. Please hover your mouse cursor above the action you need and click on it. Clicking on a choice should take you to the file uploading page.

Press the big “Upload PDF file” button or the down arrow next to upload. You can choose your document from your computer files or the cloud using your Google Drive, OneDrive, Web Address (URL), and Dropbox. 

Once you upload, the document immediately opens, and you have all the editing tools at the top of the page. Use them and press “Apply Changes” at the bottom of the page. This takes you to a download page. 

Click on the download button to store it on your computer or press the accompanying down arrow to save it on your chosen cloud storage account.

Apple Preview

• Unlimited free access: Yes
• Upgradeable: No
• Original text editing: No
• Requires download: No

This is a cheeky inclusion because it’s not online, but it is free, so it must be acknowledged! This application comes with Apple laptops and has a broad editing spectrum. It allows the merging of documents, exporting into different formats, locking and unlocking, and redacting documents.

Besides having to have an apple product, the biggest issue is that it doesn’t have an option to sign or change the text. 

With all that said, to use the application, you need to press F4 (application gallery window button) or search for it in the finder tab. The finder tab is the magnifying glass icon on the top right corner of the computer screen.

Click using any two fingers on the mouse pad cursor over the PDF document. Categories will pop up, and there will be an “Open With” option. Press that and choose Preview from the list of applications with which you can open the PDF document.

Don’t open it on full screen if you want to add pages to the document. Open the second document you wish to transfer pages from using Preview and drag and drop the pages in the order you wish them to be on the first file you have opened.

Play around with Preview to see the full functionality. You export or save the new file by using the “File” tab at the top left of the computer screen and choosing the exporting option you need.

PDFEscape

• Unlimited free access: No
• Upgradeable: Yes
• Original text editing: No
• Requires download: No

PDFEscape blossoms more using their subscription service but does a fair amount for free. To use the free version, press the “Use Free” button on the top right corner of the webpage. It’s right next to the “Sign Up” button.

Pressing that button takes you to the shady, early 2000s page with four options. The options list includes:

1. Creating a new PDF document.
2. Uploading.
3. Loading from the internet or loading a file you worked on previously on the website.

Using the upload button, you can choose your document from your computer, and it opens up with several editing options. The entire aesthetic stays true to the early Microsoft vibe. There’s the preferences gear next to a padlock on the top right.

The padlock lets you encrypt the document but not sure if it also works the other way around. A few tabs on the top left to allow for annotating, inserting, and adjusting the document. 

You can print or save the edited document using the floppy disk or printer icon left-hand column of the screen.

Smallpdf

• Unlimited free access: No
• Upgradeable: Yes
• Original text editing: Yes
• Requires download: No

Googling Smallpdf gives the dot com welcome mat as the very top result. This website’s whole deal is making editing PDF documents super easy. It is pretty limited because it isn’t freeware; it’s an entire company of people behind the screen.

You are given two files to edit for free per day. You can start a free trial or go premium if you want more. 

Scrolling a little further down the home page, you will find the most popular tools you will need to edit your document. Click on the rectangle that has the editing option that you are looking for. You can merge PDFs and even change images to PDFs.

Clicking on the editing rectangles takes you to a page with “Choose Files” and a down arrow next to it. Clicking the button lets you pick a file from whichever file you have your PDF saved. The arrow gives you more options to choose a file from Dropbox, Google Drive, or your Smallpdf premium feature cloud.

Once you add your file, you can edit it and export it as a PDF or other file formats. The other option is pressing the “Download” button on the top-left corner.

Adobe Acrobat Reader DC

• Unlimited free access: No
• Upgradeable: Yes
• Original text editing: Yes
• Requires download: Yes

This is another wild card that you probably weren’t expecting. Adobe Acrobat is the original PDF editor, but its fantastic universe is buried deep behind a paywall dollar high. There’s stuff you can still do for free besides just viewing PDFs.

Firstly, you should visit the official website and go under the download tab and follow the instructions to download the correct version for your device.

We can begin after you have followed all the prompts and permitted it to access your laptop’s deep secrets. 

Firstly, you need to know what functionality the software provides. You can annotate, sign, highlight, bookmark, and so on. You can’t do any merging, change of PDF orientation, and other similar features. These are available behind the paid subscription. 

You can sign and fill out the PDF using the buttons on the app. Please don’t be shy; play around with it.

Adios To Unedited PDFs

As you can see, you don’t have to be swatting off malware at every turn to be able to edit your PDFs freely. Choosing these editing options should make everyone involved in this transaction happy—at least, we are happy to have helped.