PDF Tools

What every tool on this page has in common

Each page loads a PDF library compiled to run in the browser, hands it the file you chose, and gives you back a new file built in memory. There is no upload, no queue and no "your file will be deleted in one hour" promise to take on trust: open your browser's network panel while a job runs and you will see it stay quiet.

That sets the limits too: everything uses your own processor and memory, so the jobs that render every page to an image are the ones most likely to strain a phone.

Structural edits versus redrawn pages

Before choosing a tool, know which of two families it belongs to — that decides what survives.

Structural tools copy page objects across without redrawing them. Merge PDF, Split PDF, Organize PDF, Rotate PDF, Crop PDF and Extract Images PDF work on the file's object tree. Fonts stay embedded, images keep their original compression, and text stays selectable and searchable. Rotating is the extreme case: only a flag changes, so the file size barely moves.

Rendering tools turn pages into pixels. PDF to JPG, PDF to PNG, Invert PDF Colors, PDF to PowerPoint, PDF Thumbnail Generator and Redact PDF rasterise each page at a DPI you choose. That is exactly what you want for a thumbnail, a slide or a redaction, and exactly what you do not want if the text has to stay selectable — afterwards there is no text left, only a picture of it.

Getting content out of a PDF

PDF to Word, PDF to Excel, PDF to Text, PDF to HTML, PDF to EPUB and PDF to Audio all read the PDF's text layer — the characters the file already stores. A PDF exported from a word processor has one; a PDF made by photographing or scanning paper does not, and these tools will hand you an empty result.

The fix is OCR PDF, which recognises the printed English on each page and writes an invisible text layer underneath the picture. The page still looks identical but becomes searchable, selectable and usable by everything above. If you are unsure which kind of PDF you have, try selecting a word in your usual reader: if the cursor will not grab it, run recognition first.

Expect a reflow, not a facsimile: PDF to Word gives one paragraph per line without the original fonts, images or columns, and PDF to Excel groups fragments sharing a baseline into rows, which works on a printed table and not on a free-form page.

Making a PDF out of something else

Create PDF, Markdown to PDF, HTML to PDF, CSV to PDF, Excel to PDF, Word to PDF and eBook to PDF typeset their input onto fresh pages as real, selectable text. Use these when the result must be machine-readable too.

JPG to PDF, Image to PDF and Scan to PDF instead place pictures on the page. JPG to PDF embeds the original JPEG data rather than re-encoding it, and Scan to PDF drives your phone or webcam so a stack of paper becomes one multi-page file without a scanner.

Privacy, locks and provenance

Protect PDF encrypts a document with AES-128 and can switch off copying, editing and annotating; Unlock PDF reverses that for a file whose password you know. Note the difference between hiding and removing: a black rectangle drawn in an editor leaves the covered text sitting in the file, while Redact PDF exports a copy in which those pixels were never written.

Metadata is the quieter risk. PDF Privacy Scanner is read-only and reports what is hiding in a file — properties, XMP packets, attachments, scripts, form fields, annotations and earlier revisions — and Remove PDF Metadata or PDF Metadata then clear or rewrite those fields without touching a page.

Fingerprint PDF embeds a different hidden identifier in each recipient's copy and can read it back out of a leaked file. Compare PDFs shows what changed between two versions as a text diff and a pixel overlay, catching the moved logo a diff never would.

When a file is too big, or simply broken

Compress PDF repacks the file with object streams and drops its metadata, then shows the before and after size. It is honest about where it helps: a text-heavy report can shrink noticeably, while a scan is mostly image data this kind of repacking cannot touch. When a PDF will not open at all, Repair PDF first attempts a lossless rewrite of the cross-reference table and trailer, then falls back to rebuilding the document from its rendered pages.