How to Edit PDFs with Preview in Mac OSX Leopard

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By Alexia Petrakos
eHow Contributing Writer

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Edit PDFs with Preview in Mac OSX Leopard

With the release of Mac OSX Leopard (10.5) came a huge boost in features for Preview, Apple's PDF/Image previewing application. Along with brand new and pretty powerful image editing capabilities, Preview now has the ability to edit, annotate, combine and even add images to a PDF. Annotating PDFs comes in handy when you need to comment on the content, or highlight certain sections without altering the content of a PDF.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Apple Computer running Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard)
A Document (a Word file, Text file, RTF, etc)

How to Create a PDF

Step 1

Open up a document in any program (Word documents work fine, as do text files, RTF, or any other document).
Step 2

Select "File" > "Print."
Step 3

Click on "PDF" in the lower-left corner of the Print screen.
Step 4

Select "Save as PDF," type in the name of the file and click "Save."

How to Highlight Your Text

Step 1

Open the PDF in Preview.
Step 2

Select a line of text in the PDF.
Step 3

Click "Tools" in the top menu.
Step 4

Scroll down to "Mark Up" and click on "Highlight Text."
Step 5

Your text should be highlighted in yellow. You can also underline and strike through (will place a line through your text) with the "Underline Text" and "Strike Through Text" options.

How to Annotate Your PDF

Step 1

Open the PDF in Mac OSX's Preview.
Step 2

Click "Tools" in the top menu.
Step 3

Scroll down to "Annotate" and click on "Add Oval" (you can also add a rectangle).
Step 4

Drag your mouse to create an oval around some text.
Step 5

Double-click on the gray square in the bottom-right corner.
Step 6

Click on the "Color" box to change the color of your oval, and you can change the thickness of the line by typing in a different number in the "Thickness" box. You can also check the "Dashed" check box to make a dashed outline.
Step 7

Click "Tools," scroll down to "Annotate" and select "Add Note."
Step 8

Click on the PDF where you want to add the note.
Step 9

Double-click the note.
Step 10

Select what kind of note you want to add in the "Annotations" window by clicking on the "Icon" drop-down. This will change the icon next to the note window. You can also alter the color of the note and icon.
Step 11

Type your note in the note box.

How to Move, Add Pages and Combine PDFs

Step 1

Open up one of the PDFs in Preview.
Step 2

Select a page in the sidebar and click-drag that page to move it to another spot in the document.
Step 3

Go to the Finder and locate an image you want to add to the PDF.
Step 4

Drag the image into the sidebar, between two pages. You have now added a page to the PDF.
Step 5

Use the Finder to find another PDF you want to add to the end of your current PDF.
Step 6

Drag the entire PDF into the sidebar, below the last page of the current PDF. You have now combined two PDF files into one.

Comments

qoppa said

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on 3/16/2009 This is a great improvement compared to Mac OSX Tiger. However for users that need more advanced editing functionality, I recommend PDF Studio which is more comparable to Adobe Acrobat in terms of functions.