Adobe Acrobat Editor is the de facto PDF editing tool and has been for quite a while. With it’s Document Cloud (DC) offering, it can make editing PDF files possible anywhere.
There are two versions available : Acrobat Standard DC and Acrobat Pro DC.
However, a lot of editing can be done locally and doesn’t need many features. Also, the subscription only based pricing can make it expensive to use if there are not a lot of regular PDF related tasks to be performed.
So, here are 5 alternative PDF editors for Windows :
1. PDFelement 6 : Wondershare’s PDFelement 6 (Standard/Professional) is a complete PDF editor with MS-Office like interface and familiarity.
Download the trial version from here. It is available broadly as Personal and Business versions. For large enterprises, volume licensing can also be purchased.
Pricing details can be found here.
The plus point for pricing is that there is no monthly or recurring subscription cost. It can be purchased as a single user license which will be a one time cost.
The main interface is just like MS Office with menus and navigation options. Common tasks like creating/editing/protecting PDF files can be accessed from their respective menus.
Creating PDF:
Select an input file for PDF conversion and let the process complete.
Editing PDF : This is for adding text, annotations, images and link. The feel is like MS Word and is very familiar overall.
PDF Conversion : Converting PDFs to MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint formats as well as in HTML, JPEG and others can be done from here. Choose the input PDF document and the required output format.
It also supports batch processing making it quicker to convert with when there are a lot of PDF files to be converted.
Combining PDF: Merge different files, different reports and selected pages into a single output file. Highly useful when creating brief summary reports.
Form : Edit existing PDF forms and create new ones using Form menu. All the input elements can be chosen by clicking the respective icons.
The point and click interface makes it easy to quickly create/edit forms.
Protect: This is for adding password security, redacting PDF documents, setting digital signing and other document security configuration.
Choose Mark for redaction to hide sensitive data and then highlight the parts to be redacted.
OCR : This will extract text from scans/photos/hard copies and make them into editable PDFs.
Other than the above features, PDFelement 6 also has a collection of templates for various types of PDF documents.
So there is no need to create a specific document from scratch, simply use the related template and edit it.
Note : As of now, there are two campaigns running for PDFelement 6 :
1. Subscribe to it’s YouTube channel and get free invoice templates.
More details here.
2. Enter a giveaway contest by sharing one of the best selling Amazon e-book that you’d like to have on your Facebook/Twitter.
Lucky winner will get a copy of PDFelement 6 along with it. Giveaway rules and additional details can be found here.
More details on how to use PDFelement 6 can be found in an earlier article.
2. Sejda : Sejda is an online PDF editor that can edit/sign PDF files, fill up PDF forms, add text, images, links, annotate and more.
Simply upload the PDF documents to be edited and choose the required functions. The free version has a restriction of 3 tasks per hour, 50 Mb file size and 200 pages length. There is a desktop version available too.
Pricing is subscription based and has an unlimited weekly pass plan. For teams or corporations, there are other plans available.
Details can be found here.
3. Hipdf : Hipdf is a free online converter that offers many PDF related functions like converting to different formats ( Excel, Word, PPT, Images and more). It also can merge existing PDF files, split them, compress or lock them.
Using it is simple. Click on the required function and then upload the source PDF file.
4. Foxit : Foxit Phantom PDF is a feature rich PDF editor.It can merge/split PDFs, create forms, annotate text, convert PDFs and more.
Security features like encrypting PDF documents and redacting them is also supported.
There are three versions available : PhantomPDF Business, Phantom PDF Standard and PhantomPDF Education.
Also, a 14 day free trial available for these versions. The one-time purchase plans are pricey and there is another option of monthly subscription.
The user interface is sleek with various functions available as menus.
Also, a useful feature is the list of small video tutorials that demonstrate how to use each of these PDF features.
The ribbon style interface for each of these functions is easy to use and navigate.
Use the Form menu to make new PDF forms or edit existing ones.
Setting document security, searching and redacting sections of document, password protecting and other digital security tasks can be configured through Protect menu.
5.Nuance : Nuance PowerPDF also offers many of the needed features for editing PDF documents. It has an Office like interface and can merge/split PDF documents, add security, create and fill up forms, digitally sign PDF documents and scan paper to PDF.
There are two main versions available : Power PDF Standard and Power PDF Advanced. The third option is for enterprises and offers volume licensing.
A free trial is available only for Power PDF Advanced. The price plans are for one-time purchase only and expensive.
The interface is fairly standard with the main functions grouped into different menus.
The Home and Edit menus are for editing PDF files, scanning to PDF, merging them and converting them to other formats.
To create or edit forms, use the Forms menu. Drag drop various elements to build a form or change existing ones.
To secure PDF documents, Security menu has a bunch of options like redact, password protect, digitally sign and more.
Overall, these are useful when working with PDF documents and can be suitable alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Editor.
Do try them out.