I recently got a PDF contract with a few minor changes to two clauses. I needed to edit those before signing. I also didn’t want to pay to use Adobe Acrobat. So I used what I thought was the next best thing, OpenOffice.
Forty minutes later, I learned what the best thing to use OpenOffice is… Free Legal Advice.
After struggling to find a button to open the contract in OpenOffice, I found a plugin that allowed me to open the contract. However it opened in a different program. Again, I had to find a way to edit it to get the program to open the contract. After all that, the format was a disaster. The program obviously wasn’t meant to edit PDFs.
If you’re like me and thinking OpenOffice can do more with PDFs, it can’t.
Here are the things OpenOffice can do with PDFs. Then I’ll talk about more useful and powerful programs.
What OpenOffice Can (and Cannot) Do with PDFs
OpenOffice’s main applications are editor, Calc, and Impress. Editing PDFs isn’t part of the design.
What it can do:
- After adding the PDF Import extension, you can use the OpenOffice application Draw to view PDFs.
- You can edit things like spelling and repositioning text, but not delete text or change the font. You can’t make major changes.
- You can export a PDF from each of the main applications. The export function works well.
What it cannot do:
- Change the layout of a PDF.
- It can’t merge PDF documents.
- It can’t edit scanned documents, and for the same reason, it can’t edit most PDFs.
- It can’t work with “tricky” PDF forms, and often crashes with PDFs that are not empty and have a single column.
- Edit Hybrid PDFs. Apache has a case describing the feature as “practically unusable.”
Based on what the OpenOffice community and moderators say, you can’t really edit PDFs with OpenOffice. Moderators have said “OpenOffice cannot open PDF Files”, and other users have said “OpenOffice will not allow much reformatting”.
You can’t use OpenOffice to do what you want it to do. It will just cause more problems.
What People Are Actually Complaining About
I looked through the forums, bug reports, and posts to get a general consensus about the issues users are experiencing. The issues pertaining to PDF editing are as follows:
- “Installing the extension opens the PDF in Draw and ruins the layout.”
- “I can’t fill out the tax forms because the text keeps overlapping.”
- “ Hybrid PDFs are no good because the edit mode is basically nonexistent.”
- “I just want to be able to edit PDFs online without having to take a class on how to use your program.”
People are frustrated, and understandably so. However, people are frustrated for good reason. Users expect a word processing program to be able to perform word processing tasks. Therefore, users expect a program to be able to edit PDFs.
The Real Alternative: What a Dedicated PDF Editor Looks Like
If you’re tired of fighting with OpenOffice’s Draw workaround, it’s worth seeing what a purpose-built OpenOffice PDF editor alternative actually delivers.
I expected Draw to perform these functions after the fiasco I had with contracts.
After that experience, I expected Draw to be able to perform these functions. Instead, I received a negative experience and a lesson on the import/export function of word processing programs.
I decided to try UPDF after this experience. It is a superior program and performs native PDF editing functions. UPDF even performs OCR to make text in scanned PDFs editable.
Format conversion. The ability to convert PDFs to other formats is huge for remote workers. pdf files are highly universally used, but workflow can quickly become complicated when you don’t have the right file type.
AI features. The AI in UPDF lets you do things like take a snapshot of a long document to summarize it or translate PDFs. The AI lets you “chat” with a PDF to understand it, and it lets you interpret data visually. Remote workers usually don’t have the luxury of using cool, time-saving features like these.
Cross platform sync. Editing PDFs on your computer and then viewing the changes you made on your phone is convenient. CompanionLink users will find this feature particularly convenient.
If you want to see an example workflow of using a dedicated PDF editor over Open Office, you can see a detailed description here.
The Bottom Line
Editing PDFs in Open Office is very time consuming, and trying to do so will only lose you more time. Using Open Office for its native functions and a PDF Editor for PDF functions is the best way to ensure remote worker time is used efficiently. Using a PDF editor for remote work will almost always be a good use of your money.