PDF Expert is a versatile PDF editor and reader designed for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, offering a comprehensive suite of tools to manage your PDF documents efficiently.
What is a PDF?
The history of PDF as a format goes back to the early 1990s - it was designed to present and exchange documents reliably, regardless of software, hardware, or operating system. PDFs maintain the original formatting, fonts, and images, ensuring that documents appear the same on any device.
Due to these advantages, PDFs have become the global standard for sharing documents in various industries, including business, education, publishing, and government.
PDF Expert is recognized for its user-friendly interface and robust performance, making it a preferred choice for professionals and students alike. It has garnered accolades such as App of the Year Runner-up and Editors’ Choice by Apple, with over 30 million users worldwide.
Introduction to PDF Expert Tools
If you’ve just downloaded PDF Expert on one of your devices and don’t know what to start with, you might want to learn about its tools first. Here are the key features of PDF Expert:
- Edit PDFs: Modify text, images, and links directly within your PDFs.
- Annotate: Highlight text, add notes, and utilize various annotation tools to mark up your documents.
- Sign Documents: Easily add your signature to PDFs, facilitating quick approvals and agreements.
- Fill Out Forms: Complete interactive PDF forms with ease, making it simple to handle applications, surveys, and more.
- Convert PDFs: Transform PDFs into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and image files, and vice versa, ensuring compatibility across various formats.
- Organize Pages: Rearrange, delete, rotate, or merge pages within your PDF to maintain a coherent document structure.
- OCR Technology: Utilize Optical Character Recognition to convert scanned documents into editable and searchable text.
We also have a separate article about the Tools tab that offers an overview of what we currently offer.
Each of the features is also fully covered in our Using PDF Expert section if you’re ready to dive deeper.
PDF Expert tools are grouped into the toolbar sections, which you can see when you open any file - Scan & OCR, Annotate, Edit, Measure, Fill & Sign, Export.
You can also find Outlines, Thumbnails view, and Layout options on the left of the toolbar, as well as AI Chat, Share extension, and search bar on the right.
If you’re using the app on your iOS device, please refer to this screenshot and pay attention to some of the tools - for instance, unlike Mac, the search bar and Outlines, as well as Layout options, are located in the right corner of the screen.
Where to start?
We recommend you start by opening any PDF file in the app:
Since PDF Expert operates according to macOS structure and architecture, we do not have any folders and do not store any of your files. You can start by opening any PDF file you want like this:
- Find the PDF file on your computer (if it’s already downloaded or saved there), right-click on it, and choose Open in PDF Expert.
- If the file is stored in the cloud or in another app, use the Share dialog to open the file in PDF Expert and start working with it.
- You can drag and drop the file to the main window of the app or use the Select File button in the main view.
The iOS version of the app allows you to store the files locally in PDF Expert and use any of your cloud storage services within the app. The easiest way to open your first PDF file in PDF Expert is as follows:
- Open any app you’re currently using with your PDFs, for instance, the Files App, choose the Share option, and open or save your file in PDF Expert.
- Add one of your cloud storage accounts to the app and download any PDF file to the app.
Learn more about using cloud storage with PDF Expert here.
PDF Expert on iOS has a built-in structure inside the app - here’s how to get familiar with it:
- Tools - this tab lists all the tools you can use while working with the app. You can easily access any of them from this tab.
- Learn - some How-Tos can be found in this section.
- My Files - this is the main folder where you can see your locally stored files. It has some of the default sub-folders: Inbox (all the newly transferred files are stored here), Photo Albums (if you give access to your Photo Library, you will see a copy of your images in the app), iTunes Files (for files transferred from your PC via iTunes), Recently Deleted (stores your deleted files here for 30 days).
- Recent Files - your last opened files are displayed here.
- Connections section - here you have all the cloud storage options: Files app, PDF Expert in iCloud, Computer, any other supported services you can add.
- Favorites - you can drag and drop your files and folders here to mark them as favorites.
- Plus icon - offers you the options to create new, import from, and import from cloud storage.
Useful resources
- PDF Expert website is a place where you can learn everything about the product.
- Help Center is a vast knowledge base covering everything related to how PDF Expert works.
- How-To Guides for iOS is a quick reference place if you have an iPhone or iPad.
- How-To Guides for Mac is a short overview of the most popular features if you have a Mac.
- Templates offer free templates for various types of files in different working areas.
- Billing and Subscription is a collection of articles that cover all the questions you might have about pricing.
- Free Download is where you can download our free trial on your Mac.
- PDF Expert Blog is a place to follow up on the latest product news.