Editor Basics

The screen

The top toolbar holds the file buttons (Open file, Recent sessions, Export, Print), undo and redo, the Select, Pan and Eraser tools, and the menus Pages, Annotate, Draw, Insert and Tools. The zoom controls and the sidebar button are at the right end.

• The sidebar on the left lists the Pages as thumbnails, or the Bookmarks. Its button hides it.
• The page in the middle is the document. Click a tool, then click or drag on the page.
• Annotation Options on the right shows the properties of what is selected, and the settings of the tool you are using.
• The status bar at the bottom shows the page number, the zoom, the file name and whether there are unsaved changes. It also has links to Guides, Contact, Terms and Privacy.

Menus and tools

The Pages menu holds Organize Pages, Convert and Bookmarks. Annotate has Highlight, Underline, Strikethrough, Redact, Text and Edit Text. Draw has Pen and Shape. Insert has Comment, Signature, Stamp, Image, Link, Widget and Form Fields. Tools has Search, OCR / Extract Text, Password Protect, Compress, Crop / Trim Pages, Split View and Translate.

Each item shows its keyboard shortcut next to it, when it has one. The tool you choose stays active until you choose another, or press Escape.

Pages and sidebars

Organize Pages changes the pages themselves: reorder, rotate, delete and duplicate them, merge other files in, and add Bates numbers, headers, footers and watermarks on the Page Marks tab. Nothing changes until you click Apply.

Marking up

Text markup (highlight, underline, strikethrough) works on the words of the page, so select the words first. Shapes, the Pen and comments are placed where you click or drag. Edit Text replaces words in place.

The eraser removes ink and markup only. Select a text box, a stamp or a shape and press Delete to remove it.

Comparing and translating

Split View (Tools) puts two documents side by side. In the Compare section of Annotation Options, Show Differences marks where they differ, and Exclude translated text changes leaves out the changes that came from a translation.

Translate (Tools) translates the pages you choose. The translated text is placed over the original, or beside it in split view.

Forms, stamps and signatures

Insert adds form fields, a signature you draw or type, stamps (18 presets, in the colors you choose) and images. The Widget item adds a chart or table.

Exporting and converting

Export saves a new PDF with your changes in it. You can export more than once as you work. The export dialog offers the options that apply to the copy: include OCR text, compress, remove hidden information and password protect. Redactions are applied at export.

Tick Save as PDF/A (archival) to keep a copy for years: every font is embedded, and scripts and attachments are removed. Papr refuses that export, and says why, when the file cannot meet the standard, for example because it uses CMYK colour or a font that cannot be embedded.

For other formats, use Convert in the Pages menu. It turns the PDF into Word, Excel, CSV, PowerPoint, HTML, SVG, JPG or PNG.

Languages and scripts in exported files

Exported PDFs from the PDF editor, Docs and Sheets draw Latin, Greek and Cyrillic text, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and Arabic and Hebrew. Arabic covers Persian, Urdu and the other languages written in Arabic letters. Right-to-left text runs from right to left, and its Arabic letters are joined.

Syriac, Thaana, N'Ko, the Indic scripts, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Myanmar, Tibetan, Ethiopic and emoji are not drawn yet. Their characters come out as "?", and the export says which characters those are.

In Docs, a paragraph whose first letter is Arabic or Hebrew lines up on the right by itself, with its bullets and indent on the right too. A cell in Sheets whose first letter is Arabic or Hebrew is aligned on the right in the same way. Either one keeps an alignment you choose yourself.

Common questions

• A large PDF feels slow. Split it into smaller parts, remove the pages you do not need, or compress it. See the file limits guide.
• A scanned page has no text. Run OCR on it, then search, edit or translate the words.
• A page is sideways. Use Organize Pages and the rotate button.
• Changes are not in my file. Export the PDF. Autosave keeps the work in your browser; the file on your device changes only when you export.