Although you can add text boxes and graphics and other basic things, you cannot do what a "real" PDF editor does - edit text. You cannot delete text or insert text. To quote Deen Read above, "Without that feature any software supposed to "edit" PDFs is almost useless."

Sherry-

According to the PDF-XChange site:
"PDF-XChange Viewer 'Free Version' is free for private and commercial use, provided it is not bundled with other software for financial gain. The Viewer as well contains extra features and functions that are unlocked when you purchase a license for PDF-XChange Viewer PRO. In FREE mode, many menu items will be marked with a special marker that indicates that the specific feature requires a PRO license to use without producing watermarks: PRO Function Logo

You can try any of the PRO features but, be very careful not to save your PDF if you don't want the watermarks to appear in the upper corners of each page of the document."

Looking at the images I can only say - what use is this "free editor" if it places those garish watermarks in your documents?

So far I've yet to find an actual free, or even inexpensive, PDF editor which is an actual full-fledged editor allowing you to open any pdf, make any edits, and save, retaining original quality.

Giovanni-

According to the PDFCool site:

"This free version of PDFCool is freeware released by IconCool Team recently, but cannot be used for commercial purposes. If you want to ge the full-working versions or use them for commercial purposes, please order PDFCool Studio or PDFCool Lite Studio."

If the free version isn't the "full-working version", what are we getting?

@John Wehlitz #30, If I am reading this right, Track Software is still publishinf a free version of PDF-XChange - they have just made it very difficult to find. If you look at their download page, in small print in the PDF-XChange box, the following text appears:

"The free version of this product may be used for both private and commercial use as long as it is not distributed for commercial gain without permission. Purchasing a license for the PDF-XChange Viewer unlocks the “PRO” features."

http://www.tracker-software.com/product/downloads

The current version is 2.5.212 dtd 08-29-13.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Foxit Reader. Although it is primarily a reader, it will extract text, add bookmarks, add images, add lines and shapes, add annotations and more. It is freeware and provides add-ins for the popular browsers.

www.foxitsoftware.com

@ #30 - John; there is still a free 'lite' version @

http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-lite

:-)

If the PDF contains any pure text, I can use the free PDF-XChange to do true word processing. You just have to know how to do it. It can also edit graphics text, but not as pure word processing.

@ #6/Giovanni

I like your comments, even though I've seen some members say the opposite, but that's not the point of this reply.

In you comment, you mentioned the skewed 'GAOTD User Rating Points System'.

I haven't been visiting GAOTD for an extended period of time. As a rookie, my first instinct was to look at the peer generated, up/down thumb approval rating. I made the assumption that it would be largely accurate and, based on that assumption, I used it as a temporary guage for each Give-way.

Reading your comments and the comments of others, I've learned that some people should be considered 'Serial Down-Voters'!

I appreciate your comments and the comments of those truly use the rating system properly. Had it not been for those comments, I would continue basing my decision on the 'Peer Approval Rating Percentages', causing me to skip potentially excellent Give-Aways.

So thanks again for helping us out!

@#6 Giovanni, it seems you have not tested the Iconcool's PDFCool PDF Editor carefully before giving your suggestion. Unfortunately, this one is not fully free at all. In fact, Iconcool offers other PDF editing/writing programs for free but all of which gave superpoor qualities and also caused conflicts to other software (e.g. Foxit). Moreover, installed Iconcool's software could not be uninstalled in a usual way. I had to search them by NAME "Iconcool" with the searching program Everything then deleted all the files/folders containing this name manually and clean off the registries with Ccleaner.

Not a very useful program, doesn't create a single html file and extracts images to a folder in seperate files. The text extraction gives an output that has to be edited. Thanks GAOTD for the opportunity to try a free program. I do appreciate posters response after using a GAOTD "FREE" program and I do emphasize FREE. I do not think this is a forum to compare or suggest other freeware and the comment by CHETTAI, SUGGEST YOU TRY PDFILL PDF EDITOR is not free it is $19.99 for the free PDF editor. It is simple, like it or not and say so. It is a free chance to try software. Some of Giovanni's insights are helpful but his suggested software has crashed my Win7-64 and some is stuffed with addware. Trust the GAOTD items but be careful of other posted links.

I haven't downloaded free PDF-XChange Viewer, yet; but it looks like it is no longer free either. It looks like they are in the middle of changing,since the text refers to it as being free, but on the same page, where you could download it, it says, "TRY this product for free."

There is also a button that says Buy Now, that leads to a page with no free options. I may try downloading so I can find out which is correct.

For now, I'll download the GAOTD and see if it will do what I need.

I use a free web-based PDF editor (PDFescape). You upload your file or create one from scratch online. Do the necessary and then save the result to your hard-disk. What I like about this method is that the procedure is independent of the OS you are using.
http://www.pdfescape.com/

I think PDF-XChange Viewer has them all beat. There is a freeware version and you can upgrade, but for most people, the free version is pretty good. About 5 years ago, I was a tech writer for a very large company. I tried every pdf editor, converter, and writer that there was. THIS WAS THE BEST EDITOR I USED, so I purchased it, but I did use the freeware version at home A LOT. It does it all.
"he PDF-XChange Viewer is smaller, faster and more feature rich than any other FREE PDF Reader/ PDF Viewer/ PDF Editor available."

http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer

The only true PDF editor I have found is nitro-pro. It does what no other PDF program does. You can add, edit or remove text. You can add, edit or remove pictures. You can add edit or remove formatting.

In essence, once you learn to use it, a PDF is completely unlocked and totally editable. The only problem is the price, which I won't pay unless I need it every day. Its $100+, but that is far less then the same Adobe product which runs $400+.

All of these other programs are pretty much useless unless you just want to add a few words to a PDF. I have yet to find a converter that allows true conversion, pictures included, editing or replacing of the pictures, and reconverting back to a reasonable PDF.

If developers want to sell this type of product, they need to fully emulate and better Nitro Pro and give a reasonable price on it like $40 or so.

I highly recommend Nitro. It does basic markup and text insertion. And is a lighter and better reader than the one offered by Adobe. All in one package. There is a paid version, but I use the free one.

As I am currently using a work computer, I have yet to download or try today's Giveaway (and based on the reviews, thus far, I probably will be trying PDF Xchange instead) but...

If you're using Firefox, you can get the PDF escape add-on and do much the same with downloaded PDFs. It really does work like an image editor, but it does the job. You can white-out lines or sections of the page and insert your own text or pictures. Then you re-save as a PDF.

Sometimes Giovanni is mentioning a program as being free which no longer is so. But giving us a lot of good suggestions who is better or rivalling him?

Win PDF Editor 2.0.1 has been given away by glarysoft in april and I found it too restricted to try 2.0.2.

If a PDF in reality is a pic you can only use OCR based normally more costly converters or editors or add text or pics in the same way as any paint program does and as "Win PDF Editor" does.

Following a hint of Giovanni in july I got Wondershare PDF to Word Converter with OCR as a giveaway. A hint to GOTD for asking Wondershare.

From another source I got Soda PDF 2012 Standard 1.0.9.2836 as a giveaway which I like most. It can do:
print to PDF
PDF to Word, Excel, Pic or HTML
edit text, graphics.
= Second hint to GOTD for asking them.

"Win PDF Editor" satisfies the most primitive wish for editing a PDF i.e. to save a lot of costly ink by deleting not needed pics (paint them white).

But my primary goal is to get as many functions as possible in the same program in order to let registry as unbloated as possible or otherwise to get several less functional programs as portable versions which let registry totally untouched. Neither of this is true for "Win PDF Editor".

Thanks to PDFZilla.com and GOTD.
Easily downloaded, installed and registered.

Tested this with a PDF file.

Result: Good.

Yes. This software CAN edit PDF files.
I was able to erase text, add text and draw lines on the PDF document and save it under another name.
Exited the Win PDF Editor 2.0.2 software.

Opened up the edited PDF document that was just saved.
All the changes were permanent.

Still , I think the best way to edit pdf in true sense is to convert it to word format edit and then export it back to pdf format using any standard office software ( Ms-office, Libreoffice, Open-office)
Here is a freeware to convert pdf to word :
http://www.nemopdf.com/knowledge/free-pdf-to-word-converter.html

As far as shareware PDF Editors are concerned this one allows you to edit pdf like text documents( the best one I think):

http://www.iceni.com

How about a giveaway from this developer? Looking forward to it:)

Today's giveaway is average and a lot of freeware tools do the same job.

bob @#14 Really? Did you even bother downloading the program that you claim is so amazing? My guess is you didn’t because if you actually used it, you would see the program is severely locked down — you are asked to upgrade to Pro to use any of the main features, like editing text. i agree with you

Never mind, just spotted the side offer for PDF OCR.

Question for the developer: does this tool have OCR capability, for editing scanned PDF docs? Thanks

I see people complaining about pdfcool. I downloaded "PDFCool Free Studio" a while ago and it is free and I have edited PDFs with it without a problem or a nag screen for that matter. Perhaps things have changed since then? My version is 3.52.

I also use PDF-XChange Viewer. With ingenuity, you can do almost anything with a PDF. I also took a look at pdfcool and as has been already said, any attempt to choose the text editor icon leads to an offer to upgrade. If you select some text, right click and select edit text, it seems to edit, but in closing the editor,leaves a blank page.

@Giovaani I just downloaded pdfcool. it is anything but free, As soon as you open the program you get a note saying that it is 30 day trial software. It looks good but it ain't free

I use the free PDF-XChange Viewer everyday. It has many editing features even though the name only says "Viewer". Check out the long list of features in the homepage link below.

http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer

> Can’t believe a tool like this is FREE…simply amazing!! ~ #6 (Giovanni)

They're usually free because they come loaded with spyware. So in effect you're paying without knowing you're paying. I'd be more impressed if they stated that they don't do this. When this statement is lacking, I assume they do.

This is why I prefer to use GOTD, where the software presumably does not use spyware because it's theoretically paid for, even when the software here might lack some of the features of the "freeware".

#3 - A free program that allows adding and deleting PDF pages is PDF Rider: http://pdfrider.codeplex.com/ I have used this for several years without a hitch. Enjoy...

Installed it and tried it for edit and conversion functions.
It has a lot interesting editing functions....

...but it has not UNDO/REDO FUNCTION. It stupid to not include this essential function for an editor. Furthermore, it's more a graphical editor.

About conversion I used severals pdf to test. The results depend of the pdf. The worse result was with pdf with unicode characters and tables. It is not a surprise. it's like most of pdf converters.

Often when you download a large PDF it will come without bookmarks, a real nuisance if you're using it as a reference file. Stupidly in my previous post I forgot to mention this superb free program that creates bookmarks. It is available at the following link:-
http://flavianopetrocchi.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/jpsdbookmarks-download-page.html


I tried Giovann’s recommended editor, but unfortunately when I tried to edit text it told me it was not available in the free version and I had to upgrade the paid version, a shame as it looks very useful.

IMHO. This is a nice little program with a lot of potential... I'd like to suggest that an UNDO button be added to the program, as well as a DELETE page button, and maybe an ADD or INSERT page also...

Great software-Erasing of pdf contents is the most useful feature

PDF documents are very complex files to deal with, they may be just image files as is often found when you download a car manual, this being the reason you cannot search them for text, or as is often the case text is compressed. So it is best never to expect too much from a PDF conversion program, it is a good idea to keep a few file conversion programs and just see which does the most realistic for that particular PDF. For all their difficulty in editing PDF files have tremendous advantages over many document types, I particularly like the ability to add images, say a graph, which looks like a postage stamp on the document but can be zoomed in to the extent that all the text and number details are retained.

#4 CHETTAI
Pdfill Pdf Editor unfortunately is not free, however, their excellent program PDFill PDF Tools is and allows many operations on PDF document such as merge, split, convert to image etc, well worth the download.
Link:-
http://www.pdfill.com/

In today's download I was just interested in the editor and had a little play with it, and for the type of work I do it will be useful. When I added some text it was better than my previous editor in that it was a much better quality also a range of fonts was available. I'll be keeping this program as it will fulfil many of my needs.

This GAOTD is NOT a real PDF editor in the proper sense of the word because you are not allowed to edit existing content (words, paragraphs etc...) in the PDFs: in fact what this (fake) Pdf Editor does can actually be done by any IMAGE EDITOR out there (see Ashraf's review for more details).

72% THUMBS UP for a program like this is simply ridiculous, since this program claims to be something (PDF EDITOR) which is not (in fact it's just an image editor for PDF + a poor PDF converter).

So once again the (fake) GAOTD user rating system misled readers here

Ashraf also said that, if you want to really edit PDF files in a similar way when you edit WORD documents, you must turn to shareware programs (meaning you have to pay big bucks for that)!!

Well, this is not true for Giovanni....LOL!!

How about you dudes??

* PDFCool PDF Editor
Oh yes, this is probably the only FREE (and real) PDF Editor on the market right now able to add, delete and change text in PDF documents with ease.

With this magic FREE tool, users are allowed to:

- extract text in a PDF file and then save the new files as DOC, plain text or Excel/CSV
- extract images from PDFs saving them separately
- add, delete or edit a word/sentence by double-clicking on it or better yet drag an area containing more words and sentences and then use the built-in "Text Editor tool" to edit them in batches (==> key feature missing in this GAOTD).
- change the font style and color of a selected text

Everything is easily handled with its amazing “Page Selector” function, designed to select specific pages of your PDF files in order to be copied, cut or sent to the "batch processor", so as to create multiple PDFs with the selected files.

Can also create PDFs from any printable documents (Doc, PPT, HTML, EXCEL and webpages), as well as batch convert any PDFs to Word, Excel, CSV, JPG and other formats with no hassle.

Supports Drag & Drop and zoom in or out, with the ability to duplicate, replace, rotate, merge, crop and resize any pages of your PDF file.

Can't believe a tool like this is FREE...simply amazing!!

http://www.pdfeditorfreeware.net

Full Tutorial:
http://www.pdfcool.com/help/Edit.html

If you want to quickly edit PDF files document properties (for instance add and edit custom metadata), preview & merge them, convert images to PDF or PDF to text even without opening any PDF file, you may also try this FREE tool:

http://www.debenu.com/products/desktop/debenu-pdf-tools/free

Enjoy!!

My 0.00000000000000000000000000001 cent for today's giveaway!!

Downloaded and tested this, I work with PDF's everyday so I know what to look for. My conclusion is this is defenitely not a serious PDF editor hence the 'normal price' does not show the mentality of a serious selfrespecting developer more a webcowboy mentality focused on making buck with some poor rubbishware more then on developing quality software. Mind me but I call this internet pollution. If you need a good PDF editor look for the several excellent alternatives and they are all free. Cheers.

FOR ALL THOSE WHO ARE WORRIED ABOUT THE LIMITATIONS IN THIS PDF EDITOR, I SUGGEST YOU TRY PDFILL PDF EDITOR. IT IS FREE AND HAS LOTS OF USEFUL FUNCTIONS.

It still cannot delete/add/merge pages of PDF documents. It's a simple operation, easy to program. Without that feature any software supposed to "edit" PDFs is almost useless.

A good program to have if you don't have or can't afford Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Pros
*Has two parts, a PDF editor and a PDF converter
*PDF editor lets you erase PDF contents, add text, add images, draw on PDFs, and more
*PDF converter lets you convert PDFs to DOC, RTF, TXT, JPG, TIF, BMP, GIF, PNG, HTML, and SWF

Cons
*WinPDFEditor's editor is more an image editor that supports PDFs than an PDF editor
*WinPDFEditor's converter has poor conversion quality for PDF to DOC/RTF

Free Alternatives
LibreOffice Draw or InkScape (PDF editing)
UniPDF (PDF converting to DOC/RTF/HTML/Images)

Final Verdict
Click here for final verdict and full review