A PDF editor is software in which a PDF document is created, edited, filled in, commented on and prepared for signing. PDF stands for Portable Document Format, a file format that shows a document in the same way on every computer and phone. Many PDF editors now include signing, and are sold together with an electronic signature service.
A PDF is built to look fixed, so editing one needs special software. A PDF editor does several jobs. It turns a Word file, a spreadsheet or a scanned page into a PDF. It changes the text on a page. It adds form fields, the boxes in which a reader types a name or ticks an option. It adds comments and highlights. It redacts, which means it permanently removes sensitive text, instead of only covering it. And it compresses large files, and combines several files into one.
For instance, consider the legal team of a hotel group in Udaipur that is preparing a 14-page agreement with a laundry contractor. A lawyer converts the draft from Word into a PDF. Two managers add three comments, about the price and the notice period, and the lawyer edits the text to settle them. Before the agreement goes to the contractor, the team redacts two bank account numbers on page 11, which belong to another contract. It adds two signature fields on the last page, and an initials field on every page. The file is 9 MB, because of its scanned annexures. The team compresses it to 1.2 MB, so that it can be emailed. Then it sends the agreement for signing.
A redaction must be done properly. If someone only draws a black box over the text, the text is still inside the file, and anyone can copy it out. A proper redaction deletes the text from the file itself.
A PDF editor is a tool for one person working on one document at a time. Reading thousands of PDFs automatically into a system is a different job, done by intelligent document processing (IDP). Construction teams use a specialised tool for PDF markup for construction, to comment on large drawings. Signed agreements are then kept in enterprise content management (ECM).