Editing text from PDF

[coc0a]

Hey there!

I am completely new to Illustrator, having never used it before. I just need to edit some text that was made using Illustrator by someone else, however, I only have the PDF version of it, with no source files.

I opened the PDF and tried to select it with select and lasso tool, however it doesn't recognise it as text and instead as an 'object.' (?) I can move it around, and I recognised the points on it (from my limited understanding of Photoshop) as pen anchor points, which I can delete.

Can anyone guide me to what I need to do?

Thanks!

[jane-e]

Do you have the paid version of Adobe Acrobat? If so, use that to edit the PDF instead of Illustrator.

[coc0a]

But it was created in Illustrator?

[Doug A Roberts]

either the text has been outlined or it wasn't saved with illustrator editing enabled.

[coc0a]

It looks like it has been 'outlined' in Illustrator by pen. Any suggestions?Doug A Roberts​

[Doug A Roberts]

You could try using OCR in Acrobat.

[jane-e · Accepted solution]

If that doesn't work, you can Redact to Transparency and retype the part you need to.

Sadly, not all PDFs are easy to edit, depending on the settings used when they are created.

[coc0a]

I opened it up in Acrobat and it is still not recognising the text. It looks like Helvetica Bold