We tend to think of PDF files as carved in stone, but if you have Acrobat Pro, you have a chisel. It’s not always easy, but there are some tools for touching up text that often work quite well. Today was not one of those days for me.
I had a document that merely needed a change to the signature block. Piece of cake. Open it in Pro, use the the “Touch Up Text” tool and change it. Do you hear the gong? If the document has been created in a font that your system doesn’t have, you can’t edit the text. Nope. Not at all. No cheating, no tricks, not gonna happen. Deep breath: there’s a workaround.
See that little camera? It’s called the snapshot tool. Click on the camera, then drag around the whole document except the signature block. As soon as you let go, it’s on your clipboard. Paste it into Word and drag your margins out to the edges. You should now have the same page you saw in the PDF with room at the bottom. Add in your signature block and you’re finished. Have a footer? Do the same thing with the footer; just paste it after the signature block.
OK, it’s not perfect because – DUH! -you don’t have the font. It’s better than not having the document, though, and you can do the signature in a similar font and disguise it with italics or bold, or insert it in a harmonious font.
Another workaround: scan the document and follow the directions here to turn it into a Word document. Make your changes and, if you want, save it as a PDF.
And that was my day.
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