Annotating/editing PDF options?

I have google'd phrases like "mavericks pdf preview vs OTHER_SOFTWARE" where OTHER_SOFTWARE was the name of some alternative software to Maverick's built-in Preview app, but the results from those searches have been really crummy. So, I'm turning to the community here. Assuming this isn't a violation for discussing on Apple's forums, can folks please provide some plus's/minus's of using some alternatives to Apple's Preview on Mavericks for annotating and editing PDFs?
Here's some things I've discovered doing some experimentation on my own:
With Preview if I use the highlight tool and save the doc, then if I re-open that doc using other PDF editors/viewers like Acrobat Reader, iSkySoft, and others even on different platforms (e.g. Windows), the highlighted text is extremely dim if at all visible. However, if I highlight using iSkySoft and then open it with other PDF editors/views, it shows up just fine.
I don't know if I'm doing something basically wrong -- it seems like it should be trivial -- but doing find's to search for a string of words varies tremendously depending on the software. With Preview, I can do a search for something like "the house" and if I put it in quotes like that, then it will find only those instances. However, if I try "the h" it will not match to "the house", but instead seems to restrict the search to whole-words only so 'h' has to be surrounded by white-space, punctuation, etc. I'm unable to do a phrase search like that at all with iSkySoft. This seems so basic, so I can't for the life of me figure out if I'm missing something from the user-interface or what.
Anyone else comment on some major plus's and minus's about other PDF editors and their features? I don't mind paying some good money for them, but I expect them to be intuitive to use and feature-rich.

Did you look at PDFPen? They have a Trial version, so you can try before you buy.
There'a also Skim, (free) it's primary focus is annotation.
I don't mind paying some good money for them, but I expect them to be intuitive to use and feature-rich.
There's Acrobat at $450

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I am using IOS system with pdf preview functions. I try to convert editable pdf file into read only for others to print without access to edit the file.
The only way I can do now is to convert to jpeg for each page and convert back to pdf then combine all pages together. It takes a lot of time in this case.
Can anyone tell me how to do the conversion without setting up passwards for protection?
Thank you very much!

First of all, don't use all CAPS as it means shouting.
Second, your question is completely off-topic for this forum which discusses Microsoft Office Outlook.
Third, this is a peer-to-peer forum, don't count on anyone calling you. If you want dedicated support from Microsoft, contact Microsoft Support directly.
Anyway, you can insert the picture in to OneNote and then have OneNote convert it into text. This usually isn't very accurate for scans though.
A better solution would be to use a application which is dedicated to OCR. There are various out there. I suggest you try their demo versions to find out which works best with your handwriting.
Robert Sparnaaij
[MVP-Outlook]
Outlook guides and more: HowTo-Outlook.com
Outlook Quick Tips: MSOutlook.info

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Acrobat 9.5 - use Touchup text Tool to edit PDF. Updates do not display. But, if I "save as" Word doc, the edits appear in Word. This feature worked in earlier versions of 9.x patches.

I have a suspicion you're working with a scanned document that has had OCR run to recognize the text. The recognized text may be stored on an invisible layer above the image of the text, and that is what you're toucing up. It's invisible, so you don't see it, but retains the changes, so exporting produces the new edits.
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Adobe Acrobat X Pro * Recognize Text - General Settings dialog box
mh++

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the subject says it all. I have downloaded the trail version to see if its possible to create a editable pdf with validation(required field) using Adobe Acrobat pro version?
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Thanks for reply. What I am trying to achieve is to give an option for the user to download the pdf form and once the user tries to save the pdf, it validates with the required field. I managed to create the editable pdf with required fields option. I just need that validation to be done when user click on save file. How can I achieve this? thanks so much for your help.

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Anybody who has done anything more than drawn a couple of lines and boxes on a page has discovered that editing the overlapping objects can be a real pain - if not an outright impossibility. Separating these overlapping objects through the use of different layers solves the problem.
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Try turning off protected mode.

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InCopy is a solution, but it's not the only viable solution.
I update many books, from 200 pages to 3,200 pages every year, long document, very techincal tax books.
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I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but is it possible to edit PDF information (author/title/year etc.) within Snow Leopard, or do I require additional software?
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Hi Ramu,
To check cube data, use the manage button next to cube and in contents tab use InfoCube contents option. You could also check Fact table data in the same tab.
You could also use TCODE listcube.
If you want to edit the cube data, there is no direct option. You have to selectively delete the incorrect data and reload it.
For selective deletion of data goto the manage button next to cube and in contents tab use Delete Selection option.
Regards,
Pankaj

I have an editable pdf made in Acrobat. Viewing it Adobe Reader Mobile (Android) and I can fill it fine. I want to be able to fill the form but it keeps autosaving. I just want to email the form and then it goes back to an unfilled form. How do i do that?

I have an editable pdf made in Acrobat. Viewing it Adobe Reader Mobile (Android) and I can fill it fine. I want to be able to fill the form but it keeps autosaving. I just want to email the form and then it goes back to an unfilled form. How do i do that?

Currently, Adobe Reader for Android does not provide an option to disable auto-save.
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Hi
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When will this happen (without a plugin)?
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Paal, I'm sorry for that little out-lash. There is nothing wrong with inquiring the feasability of a new feature. The problem is that PDF has been an "output intended format" from the very beginning.
An Illustrator file (from a fairly modern version) also is a PDF file, for all intents and purposes. You can rename an .AI file to .PDF and use it anywhere, with any software that supports PDF (so that's excepting Apple's Preview, probably ;-) ). Moreover, you can still open and edit this PDF with Illustrator and get all of your objects, symbols, layers, paragraph styles, and guides back!
That's because in fact this file *contains* all this extra information in a data block marked "For Private Use Only". Other software, if adhering to Adobe's PDF specs, will simply ignore this (and thus my little jab at Apple's Preview). Does that mean you can edit such a PDF with *any* software? No -- the Illustrator data is "proprietary", and the details are not published to use by other software developers. Similarly, one could envisage InDesign to do the same. Yes, it would lead to *huge* files -- but hey, you would be able to open THAT file into InDesign and edit it. But not with any other software!
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And let's not focus purely on a combo of ID and Illy; Photoshop *also* outputs PDFs, and its graphic data has yet another set of requirements.
So all of Adobe's software would need to be able to parse *every others' data* to some degree. Well, it's still not "unconceivable" as all of this would need to be done in one office (note that in that single office there are still vast differences in something as straightforward as a User Interface across the CS suite). But there are lots of other software developers out there, and they *all* want to write out PDFs, all with their own internal data! (Think of the different requirements between an architectural app and one for graph plotting.)
A *possible* solution would be to add "more" metadata to a PDF without crossing into the realm of "every single bit". Article tagging is an example of this -- it tells software that wants to know in which order *plain text* is to appear, and as such it serves as meta-data for plain text content. But the mind reels thinking of what more to add -- a list of used GREP styles per paragraph would probably be useless to anyone else.
But such an idea will not solve the problem, as 1. this meta-data is optional (lazy programmers would be allowed to say "nothing to see here, move along"), and 2. this data would only get added to *newly created* files, and it would not retroactively make older PDFs editable ...
(Now that's just the *short* version :-) h

I can see and download pdfs in Mail, but I can't even see editable pdfs in Mail. can anyone help please? Thx.

I can see and download pdfs in Mail, but I can't even see editable pdfs in Mail. Can anyone help please? Thx.

Thx Eric. You've helped! When I tried to copy the words written in my e-mail to show you what I meant, I right clicked to copy, and saw an option to open the attachment, which it did! So I'm sorted thank you. Editable means a form which you can fill in and send back. Thanks again. Stephen

Making an editable PDF Form non-editable (a shortcut)

How to make a PDF form non-editable or locked.
For those who aren't script-savvy, I believe this may be a little shortcut to editing a PDF form and then saving and sending it as a non-editable or locked PDF.
This is what I have written out for my client, whom I provided an editable PDF Form, so they could edit the PDF and then send it out to their own respective clients as a NON-editable PDF.
Instructions as follows:
How to save your PDF Form into a separate non-editable PDF to send to your client: (Using Adobe Acrobat Professional)
Step 1. Fill out the original PDF Form
Step 2. Once finished, go to “File” menu and click “Save a Copy” - title the file appropriately and save it to the desktop.
Step 3. Close the editable PDF document and do not save it (Saving it will save over the original file). Now open up the PDF you’ve just saved to
                    the desktop (you’ll now take the steps to make this file only non-editable).
Step 4. In the top menu, go to “Advanced” then select in that drop down menu “Security” then “Show Security Properties” - a ‘Document Properties’ window will now appear.
Step 5. From this new window, select the “Security” Menu. Set your ‘Security Method’ to ‘Password Security’.
Step 6. A new window will appear named ‘Password Security Settings’. In this menu, tick the box that says “Restrict Editing & Printing of the document”
            you’ll need to a) set a password for it, and b) In the ‘Printing Allowed’ drop down box, select ‘high resolution’   and if you want to, tick the
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Step 7. Click OK and Save the document. Now it’s not editable unless you have the password.
Note: If you happen to want to edit the PDF at a later date, you can open the file and in the ‘Security settings’ menu on the left hand side
(the menu is represented as a little gold lock) click ‘Permission Details’ then ‘Change Settings’ to revert everything back to an editable document
- repeat the above steps to make it a locked document again.

Thanks for your suggestions. You should also consider flattening a form if you want a non-editable copy; because the permissions password is not always respected by third-party PDF applications (for some people the form will remain editable, depending on what software they're using).
Flattening a form can be done in several ways in Acrobat: you can run a script - this.flattenPages() - or print the PDF back to PDF (aka refrying), or use the Sanitize tool in Acrobat X. It also strips out hidden content associated with the form (button actions, field calculation scripts, etc.) so provides additional data protection. Sanitize is the heavy-duty option of the three; it will remove all hidden content, leaving only what you see on the page.
One correction to your workflow - the Save a Copy menu item is not intended for creating a duplicate of a normal form, it's only available if the form has been rights-extended and it serves to remove the extension certificate from the PDF (allowing full editing in Acrobat again). As your client is working in Acrobat they don't need a rights-extended version in the first place, and working with a normal form will make things simpler for them. In Acrobat X Pro you could create them a custom Action which automatically flattens the file and saves a duplicate, so they don't accidentally overwrite the original.

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Hi,
I just edited an existing PDF in Acrobat Pro 9 - actually I inserted some high resolution images in TIFF via the Touchup tool.
What do I have to do to save it without any compression of the TIFFs - I tried a lot, but the outcome is always compressed, showing artifacts.
Thanks

First, editing PDFs is really only for minor fixups. There is generally no word wrap or such when doing such editing and often then seem to go downhill fast. To edit text, you have to have the font available. If the file was scanned and the OCR applied was searchable text, the only option to edit what is displayed is with a graphics editor, typically PhotoShop. PhotoShop allows Acrobat to have edited graphics and then be reinserted in the file (I don't do it, so can't give details). ClearScan replaces what is seen on screen in the graphic with the text. In that case, you see all of the text and the corresponding errors (often many). You may want to load a graphic (bitmap) with text showing or use a scan and try the various versions of OCR to see what I am talking about. That may help you see the options. Searchable PDFs is more useful if an original is critical, such as in the legal profession.

Need help with export PDF options

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Sorry I was so uninformative. I am using Pagemaker 7.0.
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Annotating/editing PDF options?

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