Edit and mark up PDFs in your browser

A PDF opens in Golem Docs as its own pages, and you can do more than read it. Fill in forms, mark up a contract, change a line of text where it sits, black out private details, and rearrange the pages. It all happens in your browser, and the file isn't uploaded anywhere.

Two modes for two jobs

Choose a mode with the buttons at the top right of a PDF.

• Fill In turns the form's fields into inputs and changes nothing else on the page. Type into fields, or click the page to place text, a check mark, a cross, or today's date.
• Edit PDF lets everything on the page change.

Mark up a PDF

Select text and highlight it, underline it, or strike it out. Choose Comment from the Insert menu to leave a note on the page. Markup sits in its own layer, so it is easy to change your mind.

Change what a page says

In Edit PDF mode, click a block of text and type. The text is edited where it sits, in the same place, size, and color. Characters you leave alone keep their original glyphs and fonts. That is why editing works even in PDFs that embed only part of a font, and why lines you don't touch stay exactly as they were.

Text you add can be set in Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, Calibri, Cambria, Segoe UI, or Comic Sans MS, or in the PDF standard fonts Helvetica, Times, and Courier. If a character isn't in the font that was used, Golem Docs uses the closest match and tells you.

Pictures, shapes, and new content

• Move, resize, restyle, or delete the pictures, shapes, and drawings already on a page.
• Add text, pictures, rectangles, ellipses, and lines.
• Change a shape's outline, fill, and width.
• Move, add, and rename form fields.

Black out private details

• Redact blacks out part of a page and removes the text under it from the file, so it can't be copied out later. A picture that is only partly under a redaction stays whole under the box, and the page tells you when that happens.
• White Out covers part of the page with white. What is underneath stays in the file, so use Redact for anything private.

Arrange the pages

Rotate, move, duplicate, delete, or insert a blank page. These act on the page with something selected, or the page in the middle of the view.

Nothing changes until you save

What you do is kept as a list of edits next to the PDF. Undo steps back through your edits, markup, and form changes together. Nothing is written into the file until you download it, and downloading gives you a complete, new PDF.

What to know

• Scanned pages are pictures. There is no text to edit, so use White Out, Redact, or add new text.
• Rotated, vertical, and outline-only text can't be edited. Redaction still removes it.
• Encrypted PDFs are opened, and saved without encryption.
• Font, size, and color apply to a whole block of text at once.

Open a PDF with the button below, or drop one onto the window. To turn a PDF into another format, see converting documents.

Open Golem Docs