Find the Right PDF Tool Fast

The hard part of a document job is usually not the operation. It is knowing what the operation is called. You know you need pages four to nine of a report and nothing else, and a site that lists its features by file format makes you translate that into its own vocabulary before it will help you at all.

This site is arranged the other way round, by the job you are doing. That is worth a few minutes of explanation, because once you know the shape of it you stop hunting for tool names and start describing outcomes, which is quicker and much harder to get wrong.

The tools hub puts every single-purpose tool inside the job it belongs to, with a row of job links across the top so you can jump straight to the right group. The groups are the things people actually arrive here wanting to do:

• Edit and fill, for changing what the document says.
• Organize pages, for changing which pages exist and what order they come in.
• Sign and secure, for signing, for baking a completed form, and for putting a password on or taking one off.
• Convert and optimize, for moving between a PDF and images, and for getting a file small enough to send.
• Scan and recognize, for turning a photographed or scanned page into something with searchable text in it.

Every tool page carries the same three facts near the top: what it accepts, what it produces, and what it will not do. The last of those is the one worth reading first. A page that states its limitations before you start is telling you whether it is the right choice while changing your mind is still free.

1. 1

   Name what you are holding

   A PDF, or images, or a mixture. A photograph of paper is an image until you convert it, and nothing will find text in it until it has been through recognition.

2. 2

   Name what has to change

   Three answers cover most jobs: the pages themselves, the content printed on them, or who is able to open the file. Each answer points at a different group.

3. 3

   Take the narrowest tool that does it

   A single-purpose page is faster to use and states exactly what it changes. Reach for a larger surface only when one page cannot hold the whole job.

4. 4

   Switch to a workspace when you are typing

   If the job means putting your own words, marks or signature onto the page, you want a workspace rather than a tool.

• [The editor](/editor) is where you fill fields, place text and checkmarks anywhere on a page, highlight, cover text and sign. Most of the tools are built into it, so you can reorder or rotate part way through without losing what you have already filled in.
• [The signing page](/sign-pdf) is the narrow version of the same thing: a document, a signature, a download, nothing else in the way.
• [The document builder](/create) starts from nothing at all. Use it when there is no source file, only text you need to turn into a PDF.

Search is one box over the whole site. The index is built when the site deploys and searched entirely in your browser, so what you type into it never leaves your device. It reaches further than page titles:

• Every tool page, including the opening of its written material: the introduction, the steps, the situations it suits, its answers to common questions, its tips and its stated limits.
• Every article, by title, description, tags and the opening of the body.
• Every learn entry: the guides, the tutorials, the short tips, the direct answers and the how-it-works steps.
• One shallow record for each product, support and legal page, so a search for privacy or accessibility reaches the page itself rather than an article that happens to mention it.

Each result shows the text around the first match rather than the opening words of the page, which is normally enough to tell whether it is the thing you meant before you click it.

Searching is the wrong move when you do not yet have the words for what you want. Three pages exist for exactly that case.

• [The tools hub](/tools) when you know the job but not the tool.
• [The learn centre](/learn) when you would rather be walked through it. It filters by the task you are doing, from creating a PDF and filling a form through to protecting one and working offline, and by how familiar you already are with the subject.
• [The tool map](/tool-map) when you are fairly sure a page exists and want to see everything at once. It is the full index of the site, section by section.

The guides are complete workflows from start to finish, the tutorials are single tasks, and the FAQ is direct answers to the questions that keep coming back. If you would rather understand the pipeline before you use any of it, how it works is the short version of what happens to a file here.

This site works on PDFs and on the images that go into or come out of them. That is a deliberate boundary rather than an oversight, and being told is better than being sent round in circles: if you need to convert a spreadsheet, cut a video or retouch a photograph, the answer is a different Novus site, and the ones that exist are listed at the foot of the tools hub.