Why You Can't Edit PDF Files In Mac Preview

Preview is a PDF viewer that comes with your Mac. While you can annotate PDFs, you can't really edit them. The proper way to edit a PDF is not to use a PDF viewer at all, but to go back to the original source document and edit that document in the app it was created in, then export a new version of the PDF.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me answer the question, How do you Edit a PDF on your Mac?
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you could read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. 
So this is one of the questions I get asked the most. Say you have a pdf, you open it up in the default app which is Preview. How do you now edit that pdf to create a new modified version? Well, the answer is you really don't. You don't edit a pdf. Instead you edit the source document. So here's what you've got. You've got a pdf document opened up in Preview. You could do a lot of things with this pdf document. You can highlight it. You can annotate it. You can export it. You can even rearrange the pages. But what you can't do is actually edit the content of the document. You can do some things that fall under the realm of Markup. For instance you can put a white box over something or add a text box on top of something. But you can't edit the content that's already there. Not really. So how do you edit a pdf document?
Well, first understand exactly what a pdf document is. A pdf document is very much like a printed sheet of paper. If you had a printed sheet of paper somebody gave to  you and said can you edit this and give me a modified version. You would simply ask them for the original document. Right. You wouldn't take that printed sheet of paper and try to edit it. Even if you scanned it in it would be a scanned image. You want the source document. Well a pdf is essentially the same thing. Think of it as a digitally printed document. It's still a file. But it's just like a piece of paper. It's meant to be permanent, this thing that you can't change. That's makes it really useful. You can fill a document with fonts, formatting images, all sorts of things. Send it to somebody else and not worry about what they've got on their computer. If they have those images. If they have those fonts. Even what type of computer they've got. The pdf should look the same just like if you gave them a piece of paper. It wouldn't change just because they were holding it instead of you. 
So let's start at the beginning. When you create a document you're in an app and you have a document open. The app could be any document creation app. For instance, you could be creating a document in Pages, in Word, in Illustrator, InDesign. There are all sorts of apps that you could use. You could even be saving or exporting a pdf from a web browser. Whatever you're using to create the pdf that's the actual app you're using and you have the document in it. That's the source for the pdf. So let's look at what happens when you work with the document. You would have that document in the app and then you would say, Print It. You would send it to the printer and then you would get a sheet of paper with the document printed on it. Now the same kind of thing happens when you make pdf. You don't need a printer. You're not printing a physical piece of paper. But you are exporting to a pdf document. So how do you edit that pdf?
Well, the way you do it is not to work with the pdf document itself but to work with the original document. So you go back to the app that you were using, you open up the document, and then you export a new version of that document. The problem comes when you're not the person who created the original document. This often happens. Somebody creates a document. They were using something like Pages or Word. Then you end up with the pdf. Then somebody tells you to make a modification to that pdf. Truth is you really can't do much to modify the pdf. It's just the same as if it was a piece of paper. You need to find the original document. So whoever asked you to modify it you need to ask them if they have the original document in whatever format it was created in, Word, Pages, InDesign, anything. Then, of course, you have to hope that you actually have that app that created that document else you're out of luck. 
In some cases the original document is lost. Maybe you created it a long time ago and saved the pdf but didn't bother to save the original document. Or maybe the person has the pdf has no idea where it came from and now you're stuck having to basically recreate that document in whatever app you choose. It seems that since it is a digital file, since it's a pdf, there should be a way to deconstruct it and get it into Pages or Word but there's really not. It's the same as if it were a piece of paper. You're going to have to start over again and create a new version of that document. Maybe this is an opportunity to make the document much better, not just changing what needs to be modified but creating a whole new version of it. 
But you don't necessarily have to start completely from scratch because usually in a pdf you can select things. Like you can select text. So it's just a matter of selecting that text and pasting it into new text boxes in Pages, Word, InDesign, or whatever. So you shouldn't have to retype things. Hopefully you can quickly reconstruct the document in the app of your choice. 
So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Why You Can't Edit PDF Files In Mac Preview”

Ed Adams

3 years ago

If the PDF isn’t locked with a password I don’t have. I can use Adobe apps to modify a pdf…

Joe christoffel

I subscribe to Adobe PDF conversion option for ~$20/yr. It performs a faithful conversion to MS Word most of the time. Only when the doc has strange fonts, script, pictures intermingled with text that I must do extra work.
All in all, though, I have found the Adobe service very useful.

Comments Closed.

Why You Can't Edit PDF Files In Mac Preview

Comments: 2 Responses to “Why You Can't Edit PDF Files In Mac Preview”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information