There are hundreds of millions of PDF documents on the internet. It has long been and continues to be one of the most popular digital document formats. One of the attractions of PDF is that it’s very secure.
You can password protect your document so that others cannot modify or edit the original. Even better than that, you can encrypt the document so that it is completely secure. This makes it a very attractive option for legal-based documents.
You might be reluctant to use PDF because you may think it’s not easy to search the PDF text the same as a document created in a word processor. However, that’s not the case. In this article, we’re going to go back to basics and talk you through how PDF text works and what you need to do to take advantage of its functionality.
Creating PDF Text Files
PDF text files are easily created in word processing applications as long as they have a PDF printer. This is not a physical device but software that will convert the digital format into PDF. This is very useful and convenient.
It also means the look and feel of the document you send will look the same when the recipient receives it. That is not always the case with word processing formats.
Editing PDF Files
Even though you may have printed a document in a word processor so that it is PDF, you will not be able to edit the PDF back in the word processor. That said, many word processors will give you the option to convert the PDF file.
If you are using PDF software like Adobe PDF, then there is no need to make any conversions. You will be able to directly edit the PDF text. This is really helpful especially when there are small editing changes needed.
PDF Form Fields
These are pre-created fields inserted into a PDF document that allows the user to enter their own text. Most forms can be re-set so that the text fields delete their content and can be repopulated by the next set of data.
OCR and PDF
Optical character recognition is a powerful tool that is able to read PDF text characters, even if they are embedded within a scanned document.
This means the text is actually a picture and cannot be directly edited. Tools like OCR combined with C# read PDF and make it possible to run all sorts of clever search algorithms on the text content.
Take Advantage of PDF
In this article, you’ve read about the basics of PDF text. It’s easy to forget that PDF is still a very flexible format, editable, and thanks to OCR and other technologies it is a very efficient medium to search text as well.
Adobe software allows you to read PDF and premium versions allow you to edit and create interactive PDF-based documents. These are secure and offer a user experience that is consistent with your expectations. Check out other tech-related articles that match your curiosities and interests on our site.
