How Office Workers Can Handle PDFs Without Buying Adobe Acrobat

Open a PDF without installed software

Sometimes the only thing you need is to look at what's inside a file someone sent you, without editing or saving anything. View PDF opens the document page by page right in your browser, with zoom — no need to install Adobe Reader or wait for a heavy program to launch for a single file.

Combine several files into one PDF

The most common task is merging a few separate PDFs into one document — say, to send accounting a batch of scanned receipts as a single file instead of ten emails. Merge PDF does this in a couple of clicks: upload the files, drag them into the right order if needed, and download one finished PDF. Processing happens right in your browser, so the files aren't sent to any outside server.

This is especially handy when scans come in one at a time — from a phone or an office scanner — and you need to assemble them in the right order before sending, without wrestling with the scanning app's settings.

Pull specific pages out of a large document

The opposite task comes up just as often: you only need the appendix from a 50-page contract, and forwarding the whole thing isn't practical or appropriate. Split PDF lets you specify a page range and get a separate file with just those pages — no manual copy-pasting of content.

This works the other way too — if you instead need to remove a couple of pages from a document (say, a page with someone else's personal data before forwarding it), you can split the file, keep the parts you need, and merge them back together with Merge PDF.

Shrink the file size before sending

Many mail providers cap attachments at 25 MB, and a PDF full of scanned pages or embedded photos can blow past that easily. Instead of splitting the email into parts, it's simpler to compress the file itself: Compress PDF shrinks the document by optimizing embedded images, usually bringing it under the limit without hurting text readability.

Worth keeping in mind: the more scanned pages or high-resolution photos a document has, the more compression actually saves — a purely text-based PDF with no images starts out small and doesn't have much left to shrink.

Edit text inside a PDF

PDF was never meant to be edited — it's a format for viewing and printing, not for changing text. If you need to revise a contract or report and don't have the original Word file, the sensible route is converting to editable DOCX via PDF to Word, making your edits in a normal text editor, and exporting back to PDF using Word's own "Save as PDF" feature if needed. This is the one tool on this list where the file itself is briefly sent to a server during processing — it's the only reliable way to parse complex PDF layouts; see the Privacy Policy for details.

After editing in Word, it's worth double-checking the whole page layout, not just the paragraph you changed — text edits sometimes shift neighboring elements slightly, especially in documents with tables or columns.

Sign a document without a printer or scanner

The classic print-sign-scan-send routine eats time and needs equipment you might not have handy, especially working remotely. Sign PDF lets you draw a signature with your mouse or finger right in the browser and place it wherever it needs to go on the document — the whole thing takes under a minute. Keep in mind this is a drawn signature for everyday documents, not a legally-binding qualified electronic signature for serious transactions — those need a specialized service.

You can redraw the signature as many times as you like if the first attempt doesn't look right — unlike paper, there's no risk of ruining the document with a bad stroke.

Password-protect a document, or remove a password

If you're emailing a client an invoice or contract with sensitive data, it's worth password-protecting the file so a random recipient of a misdirected email can't open it. Protect PDF sets a password on the document. Going the other way — if you received a protected file whose password you know but don't want to type in every time — Unlock PDF removes the protection. Both of these, like the Word conversion, process the file on a server, deleting it right after the response.

Pick a password you can share with the recipient through a separate channel — a phone call or a chat message, not the same email carrying the protected file — otherwise the protection doesn't really accomplish anything.