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Sean Q.1's avatar
3 years ago

Can not edit PDFs in Dropbox.

I was excited by the news that we can edit PDFs in Dropbox, but when I tried, I discovered that I cannot edit the text of a PDF (which is mostly  what I want to do). I can insert, delete and rotate pages, but not edit the content. Is that it?

8 Replies

  • Mark's avatar
    Mark
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    3 years ago

    Yes. At the moment.

     

    Hopefully more features will rollout shortly. 

  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    3 years ago

    Sean Q.1 wrote:

    I was excited by the news that we can edit PDFs in Dropbox, but when I tried, I discovered that I cannot edit the text of a PDF


    Keep in mind also that not all PDF files can be edited. A PDF can be imaged based, like when a page of text is scanned to a PDF file, and the text in such a file can't be directly edited (it's an image, not text). PDF files created by printing to a PDF printer or some other text-based process can usually be edited. Image-based PDFs would need to be converted first, usually using OCR to read the text in the image and convert to a true text-based PDF file.

     

    Point is, be mindful of the type of PDF file you're dealing with or how your PDF file was created, as it will matter when it comes time to edit it (regardless of what software or service you're using to edit).

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hi hsiktas, welcome back to the forum!

     

    Can you send me a screenshot of the options you see when trying to edit a PDF file, so that I can take a look for you?

  • hsiktas's avatar
    hsiktas
    Helpful | Level 6
    3 years ago

    Hi, I already contacted support about this. My ongoing ticket number is 18739846.

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Thanks for sending over your ticket number!

     

    I’ve also left an internal note to our team, so that they know you’ve contacted us here.

     

    If you need something else though, give me a nudge.

  • blhuynh's avatar
    blhuynh
    Explorer | Level 4
    3 years ago

    How do you rotate PDFs in the Dropbox mobile app? I tried looking for this functionality but didn't see it. Thanks. 

  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hey blhuynh, thanks for the nudge here.

     

    Dropbox doesn't really have an option that would allow someone to rotate a file.

     

    You should be able to export/save the file to your device, though, and rotate the saved version.

     

    I hope this helps!

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