PDF Workbench help

Small edits to a PDF that normally send you to a website that wants an upload and an email. This does them on your machine.

What each mode does

• Pages. A thumbnail of every page. Move one left or right, rotate it, or delete it, then save.
• Merge. Drop two or more PDFs. The first page of each shows as a thumbnail. They join top to bottom in the order listed.
• Split. Click page thumbnails to pick them, or type a range like 1-3, 5, 8-. The two stay in sync. Save just those pages.
• Metadata. Read and edit the title, author, subject, and keywords, or strip all of it.

Steps

1. Drop a PDF, or several.
2. Pick a mode from the tabs.
3. Make the change. The page thumbnails update as you go.
4. Save. The new file downloads with a suffix so the original stays put.

Editing the text

This tool works on pages, not the words inside them. To change the text in a PDF, use PDF Text Editor: it finds the lines on a page, lets you retype one, and keeps the original font where it can.

Limits

• Form filling, signing, redaction, Bates numbering, and OCR are not in this build. Each needs a large component loaded on demand and is on the list.
• A password-protected PDF has to be unlocked in your reader first.
• A page that uses a rare image format (JPEG 2000, JBIG2) may show a blank thumbnail. The edit still works.

The PDF is read and rewritten in your browser with pdf-lib, and drawn for preview with pdf.js. It is never uploaded.