Add a text box to any page
- 1Open the Edit PDF tool and drop in your file.
- 2Choose Edit Text, then switch to Add text box.
- 3Click where the text should start, and type.
- 4Set font, size, colour, bold, italic, underline, alignment and line spacing from the toolbar.
- 5Drag the box to reposition it, then download the finished PDF.
Adding text vs. editing existing text
Both live under the same mode, and picking the right one saves a lot of frustration.
Editing existing text means clicking a paragraph the document already contains and rewriting it — correcting a typo, updating a figure. The original wording is replaced.
Adding text means creating a new block that sits on top of the page wherever you put it. Nothing underneath changes. This is what you want for filling in blanks, annotating, or writing on a scan that has no editable text at all.
Making added text look like it belongs
The giveaway is almost always size and colour. Match the size to the text already on the page rather than accepting a default — a label set two points too large reads as an addition immediately.
Pick a font from the same family as the document where you can: a serif such as Times New Roman or Georgia for traditional documents, a sans-serif such as Arial, Helvetica or Verdana for modern ones. Use pure black for body-style text, and reserve colour for notes that are meant to stand out as additions.
Zoom in to align a new block with the baseline of the surrounding text. It takes a few seconds and is the difference between a form that looks completed and one that looks defaced.
What people add text for
Filling in forms that were laid out as forms but never given interactive fields — extremely common with PDFs produced by design software.
Dating and initialling documents alongside a signature.
Labelling diagrams, floor plans and screenshots with callouts.
Writing answers onto a worksheet or a printable that was meant to be completed by hand.
Adding a reference number, a note to a reviewer or an addendum to a page.