Edit PDF in sharepoint online

[Deleted]

Dear community, 

I am trying to edit pdfs stored in a document library on sharepoint with no success. 

Is this possible at all to do? 

Regards! 

[#2]

For my main client in medical communications, being able to edit PDFs directly from SharePoint is a Holy Grail that is proving very elusive. Two years after this topic was started and the situation is no better.

Does any 3rd party PDF editor work really well with SharePoint? A lot of them (e.g. Nitro Pro and Foxit) purport to work with SharePoint but their user interfaces are horrible and unworkable - esp. if you use a lot of Office 365 groups which use normal SharePoint document libraries. 

I really don't understand why the PDF developers can't implement a better interface to SharePoint. They've done the hard work with being able to open via WebDAV - just need better ways to bookmarking document libraries.  And certainly a better way to search for document libraries associated with Office 365 groups - and then bookmark. 

I've developed lots of software over the years and know how to access SharePoint (mainly from PowerShell but idea is the same). I'm pretty sure I could improve the Nitro Pro SharePoint interface in a few days.

But the biggest blocker here is Microsoft. Sure, you can "Open in Word" direct from the web browser, but where are the hooks to allow "Open in Nitro Pro" or "Open in Photoshop" because yes, graphic artists really struggle as well.

And synchronisation via OneDrive isn't very attractive as that means you're encouraging copies of documents to be stored on the laptop. Kind of defeats "data never leaves the data centre" approach. Plus you loose record locks and end up with version clashes. Neat - not!

Really, I'm very confused why this hasn't been solved yet. Would mean my client wasn't so reliant on network locations...

[#3]

Items 1 to 3 are all incorrect. PDF is first of all a Standard that has been around for a very long time, with its origins in Adobe PostScript. PDF is meant to be edited, think of PDF forms and annotation/commenting. It's intended to be used in review workflows.

Microsoft, like other vendors, have created PDF viewers and editors in the past. There are also multiple Microsoft connectors that allow PDF creation and manipulation.

The fact that SharePoint Online doesn't support launching PDFs in their native desktop application, is a major oversight. I see from this thread that this was first reported in 2018. It's now 2020 and it still hasn't been implemented!!

[#4]

Unfortunately, we are no longer allowed to use IE. I have libraries synced so I can still open a pdf file n Windows Explorer and edit, but that kind of sucks. But, it's the only option at this time that I am aware of.

[#5]

@rob_nicholson_helios 

Have a look at PDF-XChange Editor Plus. It works well with SharePoint (at least for me). Also if you do anything requiring measuring it has the best measuring tool out there.

https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor

[#6]

Thanks for heads-up, will check it out

[#7]

Yes Paula - for reasons I can't quite fathom you are correct. Why Microsoft don't implement hooks in SharePoint to allow you to open/edit from the web is beyond me. It would make SharePoint so much easier to use.

[#8]

PDFs (and PostScript) was not designed as an editing format -- PostScript itself resided in the printer raster system for many years before the raster system moved to computers, and even then was a print/display format only.

PDF, same story. Annotations didn't arrive until Adobe released PDF 1.2.

John Warnock said as much, that PDF was designed as a distribution and print format, readable on any machine versus being bound to a particular operating system (i.e. Office binary file formats).

Microsoft does implement converters (open PDF as DOCX; save as PDF).

[#9]

Hi @Michael Malloy 

I have tried your suggestion but I have the changes weren't saved in SP. Do you have any idea why it happens? Any other way of editing PDF in SP ?

Tnx Yj 

[#10]

@yanivyj  The easiest way that I've found was to open the PDF from File Explorer, then edit it, then save.

[#11]

I'm late to this discussion and very new to SharePoint. I'm in the consideration phase of migrating our cloud file server to SharePoint. Staff are used to accessing docs, xlsx, pdf, etc via a drive mapping in Windows Explorer.  So, SharePoint is going to be a culture shock and will need lots of training.  On just the issue of files:

We modify PDFs regularly as our staff will store an invoice "to be approved" in a particular folder.  They add a stamp with comment notes documenting the proper Accounting codes/accts and comments on the expense.  Their manager reviews invoices in the folder and will add a rubber stamp marking it as approved. The manager then moves the PDF into a "to be paid" folder for our accountant to go though.

From my brief Googling and experimentation, OneDrive seems to be the solution to this PDF-edit topic.  Staff can use the browser and would only be able to view PDFs, not edit.  However, if I sync the Sharepoint site, the site shows up in my File Explorer.  From there, I can double-click and open PDFs locally on the desktop with Adobe or we use Foxit PDF Pro.  When I save, it saves and syncs.  I can cut and paste the file in Explorer to move it between the folders.  

Am I right about this?  Am I missing something?

[#12]

@Swami7 ,

The process you are talking about is absolutely available in SharePoint.  In fact, in SharePoint you are able to "check out" a PDF file while you are making those notes so no one else can edit the file at the same time.  You would simply download the file and open it in your PDF editing software and then Save As back to SharePoint.

That being said, that is not really the issue being requested here.  We are looking for the SharePoint platform to allow collaboration on a PDF document just as it is allowed on WORD and EXCEL documents with multiple people viewing and editing the document at the same time on the SharePoint platform.  This would also allow a PDF document to have the same Version History record as well.

Hope this helps.

Carl

[#13]

I'm sure it's pricey, but Adobe appears to have finally come around to supporting the M365 platform more effectively with Acrobat.

See https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/web-apps/adobeinc.adobe-document-cloud-pdf.  Fairly recent vintage.  I don't have experience with this yet, but I will soon.  Spec-wise, seems to check all the boxes.

[#14]

Unfortunately Adobe still misses the mark. There is no method to jump from SPO/Teams -> Adobe Acrobat desktop, even with the extension.

[#15]

I don't know if anyone has answered this yet, but what I do is make sure that SP library is synced to my computer; then open that file using File Explorer; if your default apps open correctly and pdf docs are set to open with Adobe DC (subscription), then you should get the editing tools you need and save it exactly from where you opened it. Hope that helps?

[#16]

Synchronisation or network location is the only practical solution to this but OneDrive is not the most stable of applications and can still lead to version clashes.

The inability to open documents direct from SharePoint into 3rd party apps is top of our list of problems in M365. It's very frustrating that Microsoft haven't implement some mechanism to implement this obvious requirement. File sharing took a step backwards when they implemented SharePoint document libraries compared to old Windows file servers with baked-in file locking.

[#17]

On a Mac. How about instead of all this, just add the capability? PDF forms are supposed to work pretty much everywhere. Teams... always being the exception to a streamlined workflow.

[#18]

and lists with pdf attachments? ... they can't be synced. And 'NO scripting' is allowed in our tenant.

[#19]

I'm using:
https://pdf-lib.js.org/

But usually I mixed with:
http://pdfmake.org/#/

[#20]

@Joao Livio 

I am not sure I want to click on those. 

Our department is restricted to Teams, unfortunately, so we have to do this in Sharepoint, or download make changes, and upload again. Are those links to something that works with SharePoint?

So any solution to make our restrictions and protocol work for us will be where we will go. Forms elements need to work as they do in Reader. 

I hope to get the department to move away from the Teams/Sharepoint workflow and use a project management solution like Asana, but for now, it is going to be difficult, I guess.

[#21]

Well I don’t know about that. This libraries are in this case intended to be used with SPFX in order to read and write PDFs.