Saving changes to a PDF using preview

I downloaded a PDF and opened it with the Preview application in OS X.
I have edited it and now wish to save the changes but the save option is grayed out.
Any ideas? I just spent an hour on it so do not wish to lose the edits.

That's not a valid answer, and there's more to it than that.
I've just filled out a PDF forms document. I tried to save it.
According to the apple documentation and help pages, I should be able to save my filled-in forms; the result will be the PDF file, with my changes, without the ability to make further edits.
Instead, when I try to save, I'm forced to "Save as" a copy, and then the copy has NONE of the form fill-ins that I've done. Worse, the on-screen copy has been reset to all blank.
This is a documented feature -- Filling in forms, and saving the result -- that doesn't work.

Similar Messages

Screen resolution changes after opening PDF in preview and is enlarged.

Screen resolution changes after opening PDF in Preview and is enlarged.

Do a backup.
Quit Preview.
Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Remove the following. You may not find them all.
Containers/com.apple.Preview
Preferences/com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist
Preferences/com.apple.Preview.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileList.plist
Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState
Credit Linc Davis for this solution.

How Do You Annotate a Graphic Such as your Signature in PDF Using Preview?

Hi. I'm filling out a form that needs a signature. How do you annotate your signature (as a graphic perhaps?) to the PDF using Preview. Thanks in advance.
Gbu.

I'm not sure you can...try dragging & dropping an image onto the PDF. If that doesn't work, you'll have to use the Text tool. That's where Zapfino comes in.

Finding text in a PDF using preview has stopped working (correctly)

Finding text in a PDF using preview has stopped working (correctly).
When I search for certain words in a PDF using preview, it correctly finds all the pages in the document with that word. However, it no longer highlights the word being searched for. I have looked through the various settings and cannot figure out how to turn this back on.
Thanks.

4Shared worked, but having to register to retrieve files from there is a nuisance.
The problem is that you use special graphic state operators inside text objects which is not allowed:
BT
/printmatic_F1 58.133398014634 Tf
q
/DeviceCMYK CS
1 1 1 1 SCN
/DeviceCMYK cs
1 1 1 1 scn
0.62060289801053 w
0 J
0 j
2.189349112426 M
0 Tr
/printmatic_F1 58.133398014634 Tf
1 0 0 1 86.448306387737 264.65046258267 cm
(t) Tj
Q
q
/DeviceCMYK CS
1 1 1 1 SCN
/DeviceCMYK cs
1 1 1 1 scn
0.62060289801053 w
0 J
0 j
2.189349112426 M
0 Tr
/printmatic_F1 58.133398014634 Tf
1 0 0 1 102.60939103581 264.65046258267 cm
(e) Tj
Q
q
/DeviceCMYK CS
1 1 1 1 SCN
/DeviceCMYK cs
1 1 1 1 scn
0.62060289801053 w
0 J
0 j
2.189349112426 M
0 Tr
/printmatic_F1 58.133398014634 Tf
1 0 0 1 134.93156033194 264.65046258267 cm
(x) Tj
Q
q
/DeviceCMYK CS
1 1 1 1 SCN
/DeviceCMYK cs
1 1 1 1 scn
0.62060289801053 w
0 J
0 j
2.189349112426 M
0 Tr
/printmatic_F1 58.133398014634 Tf
1 0 0 1 163.99825933926 264.65046258267 cm
(t) Tj
Q
ET
Have a look at the PDF specification ISO 32000-1:2008 (e.g. at http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf). Table 51 shows that q, Q, and cm are special graphics state operators, and Figure 9 illustrates that these operators, therefore, are not allowed in text objects, i.e. between BT and ET.

Unable to join Pdf using Preview in Mavericks

The method of merging PDF documents using Preview is not working in Mavericks. When one PDF document is dragged into the sidebar of another it looks like all is well and I can choose "Save As" and give the merged document a new name, but after I close it and re-open the document, all that is there is the last page of the merged document. Nothing else. I've tried several times with different documents, but with same result. I am running OS X 10.9.1 and Preview 7.0(826) on a brand new iMac of 21 inch (Late 2012).

Yes, yes now it is working for me as well!! What actually I was doing was that I was placing the second file just below the "gray line" at the end of the first document. Instead however, It should have been "in between" the end of the first document and the gray line at the end. For this I am thankful to the discusion of VikingOSX response to Cosman dated Jan 2, 2014 4:59 PM VikingOSX. Thnx.
Message was edited by: cauger61 at 0:19 hrs.

Combine PDFs using Preview in Mountain Lion (other threads read)

I have reviewed several threads about combining PDFs in Mountain Lion. I will ultimately learn Automator but for now, I have a relatively simple question:
1) I open multiple PDFs in Preview, one window per PDF
2) I drag thumbnail pages from documents 2 through n onto document 1 so that it makes one long document. ie. one unbroken string of pages and not sections within a PDF
Question: How do I save this combined document without deleting or affecting the first document?
Duplicate causes one of the uncombined documents to pop up with the filename highlighted. I don't see how to give the combined document a new filename for saning
Rename gives me a file of the three combined documents but the first document disappears
Save overwrites the first document with the combined document
I must be missing something simple. I recognize that the lack of "Save As" is a sensitive issue but ultimately, that's what I want to do: Save the combined document with its own filename and have the individual documents intact.

ncasey88 and Old Toad:
Thank you for your quick responses. Unfortunately, with both methods, the first PDF gets updated.
e.g. Files are 1.pdf, 2.pdf, 3.pdf, each is one page long, and I open each in its own Preview window. I drop thumbnails of 2.pdf and 3.pdf onto the thumbnail area of 1.pdf. I export or print into a file called 123.pdf
Result: 1.pdf and 123.pdf have the same information (all three files). 2.pdf and 3.pdf are unchanged but 1.pdf is three pages long.

Why is Preview taking up so much space on my hard drive when saving changes to a PDF file?

I am working with a large PDF file (3.3GB) in Preview and am highlighting and adding notes to the contents. Every so often, Preview auto-saves the document, but while it's doing that it takes up a HUGE amount of space on my harddrive! Last time it tried, I went from having 4GB of space to 800MB and recieved a message saying I was almost out of disk space so I force closed the file. I am also pretty sure that I had closer to 15GB of space before I started using this file and since then it has dropped to only 3.3GB. Is there some sort of Preview cache? If so, how do I delete it?
I've tried searching my harddrive for large files and didn't find anything larger than 1GB that I didn't recognize.

read "more like this".

Cannot merge pdfs using Preview

When I had my OS 10.5 MacBook Pro, I would use the Preview program to merge multiple pdfs into one file. (I learned this from the following QuickTip on the Apple web site: http://www.apple.com/business/theater/mac.html#mergepdfs)
Now that I have upgraded to Snow Leopard, I cannot do this anymore. Yes, I can put one file into the other, but when I go to save it, only one of the files saves. I've tried highlighting both files within the new file's "sidebar," but it still only saves one of the files as a single-page pdf.
Any ideas how I can do this pdf merging??? That was a great feature of Preview!
TIA,
hsmom

Hi,
Snow Leopard has done some changes to that process.
Have a look at this MacWorld article http://www.macworld.com/article/143023/2009/09/combinepdf_snowleopard.html
Regards
Stefan

Using Layers in a PDF using Preview or PDF Pen

I am seeking advice on how to handle superimposing one PDF on top of another PDF. (As we did in the old days, with tracing paper and a copying machine.)
These PDFs are drawings. One PDF is coming from one person the other PDF is coming from someone else. We want to be able to merge these two PDFs into one file and we need to be able to position the drawings on top of one another precisely.
That way, when one person changes there PDF we can re-merge with the other persons original PDF, Creating a new document that reflects the changes.
All of this is very simple when using a CAD program. But I must deal with PDFs.
I have preview and PDF Pen as my present software tools. I am open to purchasing something else.

We took the original file via an email attachment, and used PrimoPDF to create a new file. It is in this new file that we cannot use the word search features. The Reader version is 8.1.4.
I also tried this on my PC using Reader version 7.0.8, and the search works fine. It can't be a newer version that's causing the problem, could it?

Open all PDF using Preview instead of Adobe Reader

I recently install Adobe Reader and now all files are opening with Adobe Reader instead of Preview. I want to change the default to Preview for all PDF files. I did choose open with option key down... so that I can select open with... and then chose the option "always open with...". However this only changes the default application for the single file I chose and not to ALL PDF files. When I try to open any random PDF file, it defaults to Adobe Reader, even AFTER I selected "always open with... Preview" on a difference file. Any ideas on how I can make sure the Preview opens for ALL PDF files as default?
Thanks,
Orlando - Chicago, IL

Have you made the change in the get info window? Control click on a PDF and choose get info. Scroll down to change all and click on that:

HT4075 Merging PDFs using Preview

I have followed all of the steps and have my PDFs all linked together under the same window in the thumbnails section, but when I save it only saves one document not all of the PDFs together. I have tried exporting as well, same thing. How can I make Preview merge the PDFs and save them as one big PDF? Also, it says to press Save As, but there is no save as. All I can see is File > Close Window, Close Selected PDF Document, Save, Duplicate, Rename, Move to, Export and Revert To. I am using Mountain Lion. Thanks

It would probably have been better to ask a Mountain Lion question in the forum for Mountain Lion instead of the one for Snow Leopard, but I can at least make a couple of suggestions.
Working from the bottom to the top, in Mountain Lion, you have to hold the Option key while selecting the File menu to see the Save As… item.
In the newer versions of Preview, you can have multiple documents in one window, with the thumbnails for all of them in the sidebar. If you grab the thumbnail(s) for the second document and drag it up toward the first, you will see a divider between the two document as the pointer approaches the first and a "+" sign will appear next to the pointer as it crosses into the first document. If you release the mouse button when the "+" is showing, it will merge the two into one document.

Saving changes to a tilelist using the sharedObeject() method

Yesterday I asked on here for a simple way to allow users to save changes they make to an application at the click of a save button and was given an excellent suggestion which was the use of the shared object method which stores saved data even after an application is closed and reopeneded.
However I am struggling to get this to work with changes to tilelists. In my application I have a text area in which the user can enter their name, A left hand tilelist populated by details from an array collection from which the user can then drag items into the right hand tilelist, a reset button that resets the tilelist and changes to the tilelists after the user has dragged and dropped items, and a save button which once clicked should save all changes to the application but at the moment it only saves the text a user has entered into the text area.
What I want is when the user drags an item / some items from the left tilelist to the right tilelist and clicks the save button any changes to both tilelists are also saved eg if the user drags an item from left to right then clicks save, the next time they close and reopen the app that item will no longer be in the left tilelist and will be in the right one.
Can anybody perhaps edit my code for me so that this saves the tilelists too as I'm completely clueless on where to start on this.
Here is the code for my application:-
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><mx:Application
xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" creationComplete="initprofile1SO()">
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
import mx.collections.*;
private function profile1NewsAndSportReset():void {profile1NewsAndSportAddLinksTilelist.dataProvider =
new ArrayCollection([{link:
"www.bbcnews.com", label:"BBC News"},{link:
"www.itv.com/", label:"ITV"},{link:
"www.skynews.com", label:"Sky News"},]);
profile1NewsAndSportLinkChoice.dataProvider =
new ArrayCollection([]);}
]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
import flash.net.SharedObject;
public var profile1NameSO:SharedObject;
private function initprofile1SO():void{profile1NameSO = SharedObject.getLocal(
"profile1Name");
if (profile1NameSO.size > 0)Profile1NameEntry.text=profile1NameSO.data.name;
private function saveProfile1(event:MouseEvent):void {profile1NameSO.data.name = Profile1NameEntry.text;
profile1NameSO.flush();
]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:TextInput id="Profile1NameEntry" maxChars="10" width="113" fontSize="10" x="5" y="77.5"/>
<mx:Button click="profile1NewsAndSportReset()" id="reset" label="Reset" y="5" height="25" x="5"/>
<mx:TileList id="profile1NewsAndSportLinkChoice" fontWeight="bold" dragEnabled="true" dragMoveEnabled="true" dropEnabled="true" height="292" width="650" top="5" left="521" columnCount="5" rowHeight="145" columnWidth="125" backgroundColor="#000000" color="#FFFFFF"/>
<mx:TileList id="profile1NewsAndSportAddLinksTilelist" fontWeight="bold" dragEnabled="true" dragMoveEnabled="true" dropEnabled="true" height="419" width="385" top="5" left="128" columnCount="3" rowHeight="145" columnWidth="125" backgroundColor="#000000" color="#FFFFFF">
<mx:dataProvider>
<mx:Array>
<mx:Object link="www.bbcnews.com" label="BBC News"/>
<mx:Object link="www.itv.com/" label="ITV"/>
<mx:Object link="www.skynews.com" label="Sky News"/>
</mx:Array>
</mx:dataProvider>
</mx:TileList>
<mx:Button click="saveProfile1(event)" id="save" label="Save Changes" x="5" y="38" width="113" height="25.5"/>
</mx:Application>

If this post answers your question or helps, please mark it as such.
Here is the answer:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
layout="absolute" creationComplete="initprofile1SO();">
<mx:Script>
    <![CDATA[
      import mx.collections.*;
      import flash.net.SharedObject;
      public var profile1NameSO:SharedObject;
      private var addLinksFullAC:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection([
        {link: "www.bbcnews.com", label:"BBC News"},
        {link: "www.itv.com/", label:"ITV"},
        {link: "www.skynews.com", label:"Sky News"}
      private var addLinksAC:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection([
        {link: "www.bbcnews.com", label:"BBC News"},
        {link: "www.itv.com/", label:"ITV"},
        {link: "www.skynews.com", label:"Sky News"}
      private function profile1NewsAndSportReset():void{
        resetAC();
        profile1NewsAndSportAddLinksTilelist.dataProvider
          = addLinksAC;
        profile1NewsAndSportLinkChoice.dataProvider = new ArrayCollection([]);
      private function resetAC():void{
        addLinksAC.removeAll();
        for each(var obj:Object in addLinksFullAC){
          addLinksAC.addItem(obj);
      private function initprofile1SO():void{
        profile1NameSO = SharedObject.getLocal("profile1Name");
        if(profile1NameSO.size > 0){
          if(profile1NameSO.data.name){
            Profile1NameEntry.text=profile1NameSO.data.name;
          if(profile1NameSO.data.addList){
            var addList:Array = profile1NameSO.data.addList.split(",");
            var tempAC1:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
            for each(var str:String in addList){
              for each(var obj1:Object in addLinksAC){
                if(str == obj1.label){
                  tempAC1.addItem(obj1);
                  continue;
            if(tempAC1.length > 0){
              profile1NewsAndSportAddLinksTilelist.dataProvider = tempAC1;
          }else{
            profile1NewsAndSportAddLinksTilelist.dataProvider
              = addLinksAC;
          if(profile1NameSO.data.choiceList){
            var choiceList:Array = profile1NameSO.data.choiceList.split(",");
            var tempAC2:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
            for each(var str2:String in choiceList){
              for each(var obj2:Object in addLinksAC){
                if(str2 == obj2.label){
                  tempAC2.addItem(obj2);
                  continue;
            if(tempAC2.length > 0){
              profile1NewsAndSportLinkChoice.dataProvider = tempAC2;
        }else{
            profile1NewsAndSportReset();
      private function saveProfile1(event:MouseEvent):void{
        profile1NameSO.data.name = Profile1NameEntry.text;
        var addList:String = "";
        for each(var obj1:Object in
          profile1NewsAndSportAddLinksTilelist.dataProvider){
          addList += obj1.label + ",";
        profile1NameSO.data.addList = addList;
        var choiceList:String = "";
        for each(var obj2:Object in
          profile1NewsAndSportLinkChoice.dataProvider){
          choiceList += obj2.label + ",";
        profile1NameSO.data.choiceList = choiceList;
        profile1NameSO.flush();
    ]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:TextInput id="Profile1NameEntry" maxChars="10"
    width="113" fontSize="10" x="5" y="77.5"/>
<mx:Button click="profile1NewsAndSportReset()" id="reset"
    label="Reset" y="5" height="25" x="5"/>
<mx:TileList id="profile1NewsAndSportLinkChoice" fontWeight="bold"
    dragEnabled="true" dragMoveEnabled="true" dropEnabled="true" height="292"
    width="650" top="5" left="521" columnCount="5" rowHeight="145"
    columnWidth="125" backgroundColor="#000000" color="#FFFFFF"/>
<mx:TileList id="profile1NewsAndSportAddLinksTilelist" fontWeight="bold"
    dragEnabled="true" dragMoveEnabled="true" dropEnabled="true" height="419"
    width="385" top="5" left="128" columnCount="3" rowHeight="145" columnWidth="125"
    backgroundColor="#000000" color="#FFFFFF"/>
<mx:Button click="saveProfile1(event)" id="save" label="Save Changes"
    x="5" y="38" width="113" height="25.5"/>
</mx:Application>

I don't see the "signature" option in PDFs using Preview

would like to add a signature to my PDFs, but when I don't see this option in the annotations toolbar?

Instructions for how you can add a signature to a PDF document, can be found in “Previews” help menu. Simply open up “Preview” from the applications folder, and click “help” in the top menu bar, then “Preview Help”. In the top right search area, type “Sign a PDF document” then “fill out a PDF form”.
You will see a link for “Sign a PDF document”. Once you have your signature saved, open the document as a PDF, then go to "tools / annotations / signature". This results in your curser becoming a "cross hair". Simply drag this over the area you want your signature to be added to. Also see http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/17/sign-pdf-with-digital-signature-mac-os-x/.
If you are not seeing this option, it could be that you are running 10.6.8 OS, and it is not built into this OS version

How can I know what the font(s) is/are used in PDF using 'Preview.app'?

As the subject, thanks in advance!

AFAIK, you can't with Preview. Use Adobe Reader to ascertain the embedded fonts.

Inserting PDFs into existing PDFs using Preview

Previous to the 10.6.6 update I was able to insert a PDF document into an existing PDF document by dragging the new PDF into the sidebar within Preview.
Now when I try this, instead of adding the document, it opens the PDF I have just dragged in, in the same window.
Is this a setting that I have missed somewhere? Have check document security permissions, preferences etc...
Thanks
Message was edited by: griffs

Preview (in Snow Leopard) can display more than one multi-page PDF in one window. If you drag pages from document 2 into the space at the end of the sidebar of document 1, they will remain as separate documents. Drag them on top of the pages of document 1 in the sidebar. Document 1 will highlight and you can position the pages as desired. It is easier to do it than to explain it.

Saving changes to a PDF using preview

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