Paragraph formatting

[Adam32571133t1yy]

Hello - I am editing a PDF that my late wife created three years ago. Adding one character - changing the word "four" to "three" - has completely thrown the formatting on that page and I don't see how to sort it out. What I want to do is to restore an indented paragraph and edit a gap between paragraphs but there don't seem to be any tools that will let me do it. Please help!

[try67]

PDF files were really not meant to be edited in this way, and doing so is always going to be tricky. The bigger the change, the more risky it becomes. If you have access to the original file used to create the PDF, make the changes there and then create a new PDF file from it. If you don't, try exporting the PDF to an editable format (like a Word document or an InDesign layout), and then do the changes there. Good luck!

[Adam32571133t1yy]

Thank you for your prompt reply, but unfortunately I cannot open the PDF in
either InDesign or InCopy. I can import the text of the original Word
document but without illustrations or formatting and since the file is a
168-page book it could take me weeks to do it all from scratch. Surely
there's some way round this? It seems crazy that the latest versions of
Adobe cannot open a PDF created just three years ago!

[Bernd Alheit]

Acrobat can open old PDF files!

[Adam32571133t1yy]

It certainly should be able to! These files were created just three years ago, and were used by a commercial printer, so they are not corrupted. But the editing tools available in Acrobat Pro are really not fit for purpose, and I cannot open the file in either InCopy or InDesign ...

[try67]

You shouldn't open the PDF file directly in those apps. You need to convert it, via File - Save As Other.

If you want to share the file I can look into implementing these changes for you, for a fee.

You can contact me privately to discuss it further.