When people ask me for help with their PDF editing needs, I always try to clarify what they mean by "edit". For some people, editing means annotating or filling out a form, in which case most free PDF solutions can easily meet their needs. For others, they are looking to edit the text of a PDF file or convert a scanned image into an editable Word file. Given the wide variety of needs with regards to PDF editing, I decided to write a blog post on this important subject.

The success of the PDF file format is a great example of how a product becomes a global technical standard, like the PDF has. For anyone looking to build or invest in a new technology that hopes to become a standard, I can't think of a better lesson from history. In the early 90s, the PDF was competing against several other file formats including DjVu, Envoy, and Common Ground Digital Paper.  

PDF files are hard to edit because they aren’t meant to be edited! While there are many solutions that enable a user to make changes to a PDF to some degree, they all suffer from weaknesses in one way or another. Let’s dig deeper into why this is the case.

It all started in 2014, when I was trying to extract text from a PDF file. The file contained some interesting research that I was trying to summarize for a colleague. The software I was using didn’t allow me to copy the text from the file properly, and I couldn’t find a decent PDF to Word converter either. After spending a lot of time on Google and trying various paid and unpaid software products, I came to a stunning realization: most PDF software is terrible! As a web developer, I found it incredible that users were still struggling to edit...