Ollie Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 Dear All,I have a couple of PDF files which I am needing to type directly on to. However, they are view only. I was wondering if anyone knew any programmes that I could download which would allow me to type onto them?Cheers.Ollie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pogofish Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 Adobe Acrobat I'm afraid or Photoshop/Illustrator, which are passable for single page files.All the freeware alternatives I've tried have been unutterably shite & destroyed the formatting of the original document, or saved unopenable files. Still, if anyone knows a reliable one, I'd love to know as it would help a lot of other people. If it is any help, before I got my full copy of Acrobat, we used to print & scan the PDF into photoshop/word, do the typing & save it back to PDF (from photoshop) or RTF/DOC from word. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Norseman Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 I use Expert PDF which cost me about 30. Not exactly freeware but a damn site cheaper than the full Adobe Acrobat package. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 If you're opening the PDF up in Adobe Acrobat Reader (which is free) and it won't let you type on the document (because you can type onto PDFs using Reader) then the PDF has been protected and made read-only by the author. So there is no way of being able to type on the document short of taking a screen capture of each page and then typing over the top of them or, as already suggested, printing it out and then scanning it back in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pogofish Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 You realise the whole point of PDFs is that they can't be easily edited? Chances are... if it's in PDF you maybe shouldn't be typing into it. That may have been the original idea but in my line, many agencies/funders & the like are now insisting that all the paperwork is submitted online, on their forms, which are almost invariably supplied on PDF. Also, many of the publishers I deal with are now moving to PDF as a preferred format for anything that includes graphics.Which is a bit of a bind, especially when the applicants have this habit of discovering they need some vital form or other completed yesterday & I'm one of the only two folk in the building with a full copy of Acrobat (& no, we don't lend-out copies!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 Which is a bit of a bind, especially when the applicants have this habit of discovering they need some vital form or other completed yesterday & I'm one of the only two folk in the building with a full copy of Acrobat (& no, we don't lend-out copies!) You can type onto PDFs just fine using Adobe Acrobat Reader (which is completely free). Assuming the PDFs haven't been protected by their author(s). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ollie Posted December 9, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 Cheers,I shall scan.Ollie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pogofish Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 Assuming the PDFs haven't been protected by their author(s).Then that must be what they are doing. Bright! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Hobo Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 Search on SourceForge.net: Open Source Software for a virtual printer - virtual print driver. You might be able to find one that lets you print directly from the pdf viewer to a word document or odt so that you can edit it directly in word or openoffice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Norseman Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 eXPert PDF 6: Amazon.co.uk: SoftwareExpert PDF v6.0the original v5.0 was a wee bit ropey though worked a lot better when patched but v6.0 is seemingly pretty stable and does most things that the multi hundred pound full blown Acrobat will do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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