How to Edit, Merge, and Split PDFs With Free Online Tools

More than 30 years after Adobe came up with it, the PDF file—portable document format—remains essential for archiving, sharing, and publishing. It’s a file type that can be opened by just about anyone on virtually any mobile or desktop device, while preserving the formatting, colors, and layout of the original document.

Given the ubiquity and popularity of the PDF, it’s no surprise that commercial PDF software tools are in high demand. But you don’t necessarily have to pay to process these documents, especially for basic editing operations.

A host of PDF tools are available on the web that will let you quickly and easily manipulate your documents for free (with more advanced features and usage limits available for a price). There’s nothing to download, nothing to install, and nothing to pay, and they’re perfect for small-scale edits.

We’ve picked three of the best online PDF app suites below, together with three common tasks you can do with them. While these sites are all well established and reputable, use some common sense with the documents you share. Be wary about using a cloud service for editing files containing sensitive info.

Edit PDFs With TinyWow

TinyWow lets you edit your PDFs in numerous ways.

Photograph: David Nield

Head over to TinyWow in your web browser and you’ll see there are plenty of PDF tools to pick from, from converters to compressors. Here we’re going to show you how to apply some basic edits to a document, so click Edit PDF and then select Upload from PC or Mobile to pick the file you want to work with.

You’ll find the page navigator on the left, the zoom controls in the top right, and your editing tools along the top. Click Text, for example, and you can drop in new text on top of your PDF, using a font, size, and color of your choice. The editor also lets you click on existing text already in the PDF to edit it.

Select the Highlight or Shapes tools to annotate your PDF: You can add a colored highlight to any text in the document, and drop in arrows, lines, circles, and rectangles. Whenever you create a new object or select an existing object, you’ll see a dialog pop up that enables you to customize, move, and delete the object.

The Image tool is useful as well, enabling you to drop in a picture stored on your device—you get handles at the sides of the image for changing its size on the page. When you’re happy with the way your edited PDF is looking, click Download (top right) to save it, or Start Over to start again.

Merge PDFs With iLovePDF

You can have your PDFs merged in seconds in iLovePDF.

Photograph: David Nield

The iLovePDF site has a broad selection of PDF tools, similar to TinyWow. You can turn PDFs into Microsoft Office files, convert PDFs into images or vice versa, edit PDFs in detail, and even sign and watermark PDFs. For now we’re going to concentrate on merging PDFs: Click Merge PDF from the options to get started.