Best, cheapest PDF editor (one-time purchase)?

Software
1

As much as I hate PDFs, they just won’t go away and I’m forever running into situations in which someone sends a form file in PDF format that I need to fill out and return.

What is the best but cheapest PDF editor that will allow me to fill in such a PDF file? That’s all I need the editor to do, let me fill in a form. I don’t need anything with a lot of whiz-bang features. I don’t want a cloud-based app as some data could be sensitive, and I don’t want to pay a monthly subscription fee. I just want a cheap, basic PDF editor I can use for the next ten years. Thanks.

2

This is not a direct answer, but I’ll mention that I use Preview for '“filling in PDF forms”. Every form-aware app that I’ve used over the years eventually comes up against an ill-made form that just cannot be parsed. It’s not the software’s fault, its because PDF. With Preview, I just add and position text fields, a process that gets the job done first time, every time. And it’s free.

Katie

6 Likes
3

I’ll second @KVZ that I’ve never felt the need for another PDF program on Mac because of Preview. If a PDF has fillable fields, Preview works great with those. I could be crazy but I think it will also automatically guess on PDFs without fields and add text boxes to fill out.

2 Likes
4

I use Preview as well. It is a blessing to have Preview compared to any of the budget options available on Windows. I can fill in fillable forms easily. I can easily add text boxes to non-fillable forms (AFAICT, it does not guess on fields as @tnetha suggests), and I can even do some basic vector drawing. The key is to show the Markup toolbar, which is hidden by default and, annoyingly, doesn’t stay visible between runs of the application. See Apple’s support document for details:

2 Likes
5

There is Skim, which is free.

1 Like
6

I don’t exactly do a lot of PDF form filling, but for my needs Preview has been more than enough.

1 Like
7

In that case, someone did not do a good job of making the last fillable PDF I had to use! It was so sloppy I thought surely this is the work of AI…

1 Like
8

Yes, Preview added a feature sometime in the last couple of years to try and create form fields on a PDF that appears to be a form but doesn’t already have fields. It seems to stop when it sees fields that already exist though, which means it doesn’t tend to recreate fields if you accidentally delete one or save close and then reopen the file. I seem to recall it might also struggle with multi page PDFs. This feature also exists on iPad.

1 Like
9

Thanks, Katie. I didn’t think of that. I’ll give it a try.

10

+1 for Preview. Works great and it’s free.

1 Like