Find and replace text in a PDF

A real example

In a two-page service agreement, the provider was named “Sample Company” several times, and it needed to become “Sample Studio”. With the search panel open and both terms typed in, the counter showed 6 matches across the two pages and the editor highlighted the matching lines on the visible page. One click on “Replace all” changed them all at once, each in the font and size of its own line, leaving the rest of the agreement untouched.

Before

After

How to replace text in a PDF in 3 steps

1. 1

   Open the search panel

   With the PDF loaded, press “Search” in the top bar or Ctrl+F. The first time, the editor reads every page, which takes a few seconds on long documents.

2. 2

   Review the matches

   Step through them with the arrows, or with Enter and Shift+Enter. Turn on “Aa” to match case, or “Whole word” so that “art” doesn’t find “start”.

3. 3

   Replace and download

   “Replace” changes only the current match and “Replace all” changes every one of them; a single Ctrl+Z undoes the whole replacement. Then download the PDF.

Typical uses

It is meant for correcting your own documents, or ones you have the right to change, when the same edit repeats many times:

• Swapping a company name in an agreement or a quote you reuse as a template.
• Updating a date that shows up in the header, in the clauses and next to the signature.
• Fixing a price, a reference or an order number that appears on several pages.
• Correcting a repeated typo, like a surname misspelled throughout a report.

How to avoid surprises

• The replacement is written exactly as you type it. Without “Aa”, searching for “sample company” also finds “SAMPLE COMPANY” in a heading, which would become “Sample Studio”. If the document uses all-caps headings, turn on “Aa” and do one pass for each form.
• Accents count: “Muller” doesn’t find “Müller”. If you aren’t sure how a word is spelled, search for a part of it without the doubtful letter.
• A date written two ways means two searches: “03/12/2026” won’t find “March 12, 2026”.
• If a phrase doesn’t turn up, the PDF may split it across two lines: search for each half and fix them separately.
• For short names or acronyms, turn on “Whole word” so you don’t also change the words that contain them.
• If you are changing a long name and its acronym too, replace the long name first and the acronym afterwards, so one pass doesn’t alter what the other just changed.
• Before downloading, step through a few matches with the arrows: if the new text is longer, make sure the line doesn’t run into whatever is next to it.

Search panel details

• Every page is read only once per document (“Scanning document…”); later searches don’t wait.
• Matches are visited in reading order, page by page, and the counter shows which one you are on, for example “3 of 12”.
• With the cursor in “Replace with…”, Enter replaces the current match and moves to the next one; Esc closes the panel.
• After “Replace all”, a notice says how many matches were changed and in how many lines.
• If you edit a line by hand or delete pages while the panel is open, the list of matches updates on its own.

Useful even when you replace nothing

• Getting around a long document: type a word from the clause you need and the editor jumps to its page.
• Counting how often a term appears: the counter tells you before you change anything.
• Confirming that a detail you deleted is really gone: open the downloaded PDF in the editor and search for it; if it turns up, it is still inside the file.

What’s preserved and what isn’t

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Frequently asked questions

More tools

• Edit text in a PDF
• Change a date in a PDF
• OCR: make a PDF searchable