How to Edit a PDF: Add and Remove Text Without Breaking It
We tested a PDF editor and 3 other methods on an Arabic file: adding text, editing a line, Word conversion, a blank start. What works, what stays in the file.
Read article →Abdelilah Barbach is the founder of SmokePDF and builds its browser-based PDF tools. He writes practical guides on compressing, converting, merging and protecting PDF files, based on how the site's own tools work and on testing them with real documents. He writes in Arabic and English.
We tested a PDF editor and 3 other methods on an Arabic file: adding text, editing a line, Word conversion, a blank start. What works, what stays in the file.
Read article →
We tested five protected PDFs: open passwords vs print and copy restrictions, how to unlock each one properly, and when you're entitled to.
Read article →
We hid numbers in a PDF with black boxes and recovered every one. Six places information leaks from, how to redact a PDF properly, and how to check a file before you send it.
Read article →
How to convert a colour PDF to black and white before printing a booklet or textbook: a test measuring ink, file size and text clarity, and when to pick grayscale or pure black and white.
Read article →
Why Arabic text changes font or size, and pages shift, after converting Word to PDF: a test with nine cases, and the conversion route that keeps the font.
Read article →
Why numbers land in the wrong columns or arrive as text after converting PDF to Excel: a test on 4 files, and how to fix each problem in Excel.
Read article →
How to get a PDF under 1 MB, 500 KB or 200 KB for an upload portal without losing the stamp: budget each page and pick the quality from real measurements.
Read article →
Broken or reversed Arabic text after converting PDF to Word? Learn why it happens, diagnose your file in a minute, and fix the result step by step.
Read article →
What a free PDF converter often hides, a checklist for privacy, quality and Arabic support, and what to expect from PDF to Word, JPG to PDF and more.
Read article →
What actually happens when a PDF is processed inside your browser: the libraries involved, each step, the limits of this approach, and how to verify your file is never uploaded.
Read article →
How to photograph documents with your phone, combine them into a single PDF in the right order, and get under an online portal's size limit, with no app to install.
Read article →
When to remove pages from a PDF, what happens to the file when you do, what to check before sending it, and how to do it in the browser or offline.
Read article →
What OCR is, how to tell whether a scanned PDF needs it, what improves accuracy for Arabic and mixed-language documents, and what to check by hand afterwards.
Read article →
When to send a PDF and when to send a Word file: a practical comparison of editing, layout, protection and printing, with CV, contract and form examples.
Read article →
A comparison of ways to shrink a PDF, from rewriting the structure to turning pages into images, removing pages and splitting, with a guide to choosing by use case.
Read article →
A plain explanation of what happens when a PDF is compressed: what the file is made of, why it gets big, lossless versus lossy, and why some files barely shrink.
Read article →
What a PDF file is and what's inside it: embedded fonts, images and the text layer, why it looks the same on every device, and when it isn't the right format.
Read article →
Step by step: compressing a PDF with SmokePDF, which mode to choose, how to get under a 2 MB or 5 MB portal limit, and real test results on scanned files.
Read article →
How to combine several PDFs into one in the right order, what survives a merge and what doesn't, with a worked example of an application file from an ID and certificates.
Read article →