Guides
Every long-form guide on the site, grouped by the tool it belongs to. Each one covers a specific problem rather than a feature tour: a document that won't print, a scan with no text layer, a statement that has to be shrunk to clear an upload limit.
27 guides across 10 tools. Every tool page also links its own guides at the bottom, so you can reach any of these from the tool you're already using.
Redact
Open Redact →Redact a bank statement before you send it
Box off the account number, keep the balance the reader needs, and export a copy where the covered text is gone from the file. It all runs in your browser, and the statement never leaves it.
A black box on a PDF doesn’t remove the text
A rectangle drawn over a word leaves the word in the file. Here’s a ten-second way to prove it on any ‘redacted’ PDF, and what actually removes text instead of hiding it.
Redact an invoice or a receipt
An invoice has to stay legible to be useful. What to keep, what to box, and what a redacted page costs you. The covered pages are redrawn as images, so the text layer goes with them.
Redact a medical record without stripping the clinical picture
Pull the identifiers off a record before it goes to an insurer, an employer or another doctor, without taking out the clinical detail the reader needs. Runs in your browser, and nothing is uploaded.
Remove Password
Open Remove Password →Open a password-protected PDF
Enter the password you already have and get back a file you can print, merge and search. RC4-40/128, AES-128 and AES-256. No cracking, no upload. The password stays in this tab.
The PDF opens fine — but it won’t print, copy or edit
A PDF that opens but refuses to print, copy or edit is carrying permission flags. How to tell, what the workarounds cost, and what an unrestricted copy actually changes.
Owner password or user password — which one does your file have?
One of them encrypts the document; the other only asks readers to behave. Five seconds to find out which one your file has, and why the difference decides whether a password matters at all.
A PDF can’t stop you printing it
A PDF can ask a reader not to print it. It can’t stop the printer. Here’s what the flag actually does, and how to get a printable copy of a file you’re entitled to print.
Extract Text
Open Extract Text →Copy text out of a PDF
Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C is the whole job when the PDF has a text layer. When the paste comes out scrambled, here’s what’s happening and how to get a clean result, all locally.
Why can’t I select the text in this PDF?
Two causes look identical from the outside: the document forbids copying, or there’s no text on the page to copy. Five seconds to tell them apart, without uploading anything.
Turning a PDF into Markdown
Markdown is structure; a PDF is coordinates. Conversion is a series of guesses. Here’s exactly which ones this tool makes, and which parts of your document won’t come across.
A scanned PDF has no text layer — here’s how to read it anyway
A scan is a picture of a page, so there’s no text layer to read. Tick the OCR option and a ~7 MB engine reads printed English inside your browser — nothing uploaded.
Compress
Open Compress →Compress a bank statement PDF before you upload it
Shrink a statement to fit a 2–5 MB upload limit in your browser. Two routes run, the smaller file is kept, and you’re told what the smaller one cost you.
Compress a scanned PDF
A scan is the one kind of PDF that shrinks by 80–95%. Here’s why, what the resolution setting costs you in readability, and the page-size ceiling that quietly caps the output.
Get a PDF under the attachment limit
Email caps an attachment and the recipient’s mailbox may cap it lower. Work out how much you actually need to lose, then take it off the right parts of the file.
Merge PDFs
Open Merge PDFs →Merge PDFs, taking only the pages you need
Combine several files in your own order, and pull a page range out of any of them on the way in: a signature page from one contract, the body from a report. Runs in your browser, and nothing is uploaded.
Attach a signed page to the contract it belongs to
Attach a signature page, an annex or a schedule to the document it belongs to. Pages are copied through unchanged, so the signed page arrives exactly as it was signed.
Strip Metadata
Open Strip Metadata →What your PDF remembers about you
Author name, the software that made it, the machine it came from, original file paths, sometimes a location. See exactly what a file is carrying before you send it, then decide what stays.
Take your name off a PDF you are sending out
The author field is usually the account name the software was licensed to, often your full name, and often not the name on the document. See it, clear it, and check that it’s really gone.
Crop PDF
Open Crop PDF →Trim the white border off a scanned page
Scanners add a wide blank margin that wastes space and makes text smaller on screen. Snap to the content edges in one click, or set a uniform margin. Runs in your browser.
Get every page to the same size
A document assembled from different sources usually arrives with different page sizes. Here’s what a page-size tool can change, what it can’t, and the difference between the two.
Organize Pages
Open Organize Pages →Split a PDF into one file per page
Break a document into individual page files without installing anything. Pages are exported as single-page PDFs, bundled into one ZIP with zero-padded names so they sort correctly.
Delete pages from a PDF without wrecking the rest
Mark pages for deletion on a thumbnail grid and export the rest. Nothing changes until you export, so a misclick costs you nothing until you decide it should.
Encrypt PDF
Open Encrypt PDF →Password protect a PDF — the kind that stops people opening it
An open password encrypts a PDF with AES-256 and the file never leaves your machine. What it protects, what the second password is for, and why a lost password can’t be recovered.
Stop people printing or copying your PDF
Turning printing, copying and editing off in a PDF sets permission flags that readers choose to honour. How to set them, what they stop, and the reason the restriction is easy to remove.
Rebuild & Diagnose
Open Rebuild & Diagnose →Repair a corrupt PDF — and find out whether yours can be repaired at all
A rebuild repairs the structure of a PDF that still parses: cross reference tables, unused objects, stream lengths. It can’t bring back a truncated file. How to tell which one you have.
There was an error opening this document
That message means the reader could not parse the file structure. The causes that actually produce it, four checks that tell them apart, and when a rebuild will get your PDF back.
If none of these is your problem
The index above covers the tasks that come up often enough to write about. Everything the site can do is on the home page: every tool, no accounts, and nothing uploaded.
If a tool did something unexpected, or a file defeated it, the contact page says what to include in a report so it can be reproduced. Bug reports about a specific file are the most useful kind, and the file itself never has to be sent; a description of what it is and what happened is enough.