Do online PDF tools upload your files? How to check in two minutes
Most online PDF tools send your document to their servers. Here is how to tell a browser-only tool from one that uploads, using the Network tab and an airplane-mode test.
PDF guides
We write about the places people get stuck with PDFs: why the file is huge, why the text won’t select, why the redaction didn’t work. Every guide links to the tool that does the job.
How to reduce PDF file size without making it look awful
Why PDFs get huge, what each compression setting actually changes, and the order to try things in when you need to get under a 2, 10 or 25 MB upload limit.
Why you can’t search a scanned PDF, and how OCR fixes it
A scanned PDF is really a stack of photos. What OCR does, where it goes wrong, and how to prepare a scan so the recognized text is actually usable.
Redacting a PDF: why drawing a black box isn’t enough
The text under a black rectangle is often still in the file. What real redaction does differently, common mistakes, and the checks to run before you send the document.
Why converting a PDF to Word breaks the layout, and what to do about it
A PDF is a drawing of a page; a Word file is flowing text. What survives a conversion, what doesn’t, and when you don’t need to convert at all.
Signing a PDF: visual, electronic and digital signatures are not the same thing
Pasting an image of your signature and applying a certificate-based digital signature are very different things. A plain-language guide to which one is enough, and when.
PDF passwords explained: open passwords, permission passwords and removing them
PDFs have two kinds of password and they protect very different things. Which one to use, what strong encryption means, and how to unlock a PDF whose password you know.
What is PDF/A, and when do you actually need it?
What a court, archive or tax office means when it asks for “PDF/A”. The versions, the things that make a file fail validation, and how to check a converted file.
Turning phone photos into one clean, readable PDF
An ID copy, a receipt, a signed page: how to turn photos taken with your phone into one straight, legible PDF of a sensible size.