How to Create Editable PDFs for Retail Signs Without Adobe Subscription

PowerPoint would be fine for this.

Don't count on stores having any access to anything more sophisticated than Word — or maybe Google Docs would be a better choice. IME, anything that requires the slightest bit of expertise out in the retail zone leads to confusion and miserable failure.

Create a preprint in PDF, with defined text areas. Then create a precisely built Word/GD document that has the text in defined frames that are as locked as well as you can manage. Update will be to make the changes in Word or GD, then print on a "styled" preprint, which can be from an earlier pass on the same printer, or something you have commercially printed in bulk.

I've used this successfully even with the, er, busiest store manager/dresser types.

@tamera_0985

Maybe InCopy? 

You could have them change the text with forms, but it is still not a good solution. The best solution I have seen for something like this would be server based.

As pointed out already, and only so you know it's not a lone opinion, this will not work. Rethink the whole thing!

In brief:

-PDF isn't suitable for this task. While it's possible to edit PDF to a certain extent, it's not a proper, efficient, or in fact reliable format to achieve what you need.

-Even if you embed your fonts in PDF, when you edit PDF the fonts still have to be present on the machine you edit PDF on.