Help guides

The PDF editor

On Solo and up, the PDF editor changes a PDF before you send it by adding over the page: text, pictures and shapes on top of it, a cover over words you want gone, pages rotated or deleted, or a blank page added. SignSwifly can’t change a PDF’s own text as text: it adds over the page instead. A Word file dropped on the PDF editor opens in the document editor instead, where its words can be changed. On the Free plan the PDF editor shows a padlock.

Open a PDF

  • Choose PDF editor in the menu. Choose a PDF or a Word file, or drag one onto the box. A PDF opens here; a Word file (.docx, .doc or .rtf) is handed to the document editor and opens there. A damaged or password-protected PDF can’t be opened.
  • From a draft envelope: on a document’s menu under Send & Sign, choose Edit content. Your changes are saved back into that document with Save to document (Save on a narrow screen), and you’re taken back to the envelope. Fields already on it are kept, and each moves with the words beside it. A field whose words have gone stays where it was. The save says how many there are, and back on the envelope they’re marked and listed under Check these fields, so you can move them before you send. On a Word document, saving here turns it into a PDF for good, and Edit wording is no longer offered for it; the page says so before it opens.

Add to the page

Under Add, choose a tool and click the page, or press Enter on the tool to add it to the middle of the page you’re viewing. On a narrow screen the tools are a strip under the bar, without their headings. What you add can be moved with the mouse or the arrow keys, and its exact position and size set by number.

  • Text: a text box, with its size, alignment, bold, italic, colour and a background.
  • Rich text: a list, one point a line, plain, bulleted or numbered, with its size, line spacing, bold and colour.
  • Table, Rectangle, Ellipse, Line and Arrow.
  • Image: a PNG or JPEG picture.
  • White-out box, under Cover up: covers what’s underneath. The words under it are taken out of the file when you save, download, send for signing, or save into an envelope’s document, so they aren’t left in it for a reader to find; a picture under it is covered. In a PDF saved under Saved PDFs, the box can still be moved or deleted, but the words it covered when you saved are gone from the file: moving it shows a blank space where they were. What you added under it yourself is still there to move. A PDF saved before saving took the words out still has them under its boxes, and says so when it’s opened: choose Save to take them out. A filled rectangle, or a text box or rich text with a background, takes out the words under it in the same way. Once placed, a white-out box shows as a Rectangle: untick Filled and it no longer hides anything, though words it took out when you saved stay out. Add a text box on top to replace the wording. In a few PDFs (most often ones whose text is in bold or italic Times, in the PDF format’s built-in fonts; ones with a word raised or lowered off its line under the box, such as a superscript or a footnote marker; or where taking the words out would also take letters that still show beside the box), the words under a box can’t be taken out of the file cleanly, so nothing is saved and the page says so. Save the document as a PDF again (for example, print it to PDF) and edit that copy. In a PDF under Saved PDFs, the page says how to save your other changes instead: delete that box, or untick its Filled; then, to cover those words, Download the PDF without the box, save it as a PDF again, open that copy here and cover them there. Nothing is saved either, and the page says why, when the words under a box also appear on another page (a letterhead, say), or the PDF has redactions marked but not applied.
  • Under Every page, type a Header or a Footer, with {page} and {pages} for page numbers. They aren’t shown in the editor, only in what you download, send or save to a document: the header at the top left of each page, the footer at the bottom in the middle.

In the document, a table’s columns share its width evenly and its rows its height, whatever the editor shows: it widens a column for long words and grows a row for a long cell. Make the table wide and tall enough for its longest cell, or a line that doesn’t fit is left out.

A PDF and its pictures can come to 40 MB at most, and the pictures to 16 MB; past that the page asks for fewer or smaller pictures. A PDF can have up to 300 pages. One that SignSwifly can’t open safely (a damaged one, say) isn’t edited or saved, and the page says so: save it as a PDF again (for example, print it to PDF) and open that copy here.

Text in English and the other languages of Western Europe, accents and all (O’Brien, Zoë, Müller, €), prints exactly as it always has, in the same font and size. The editor shows it in a different font, a little wider, mostly for figures such as dates, amounts and account numbers, so the document can fit a word or two more on a line than the editor shows, and break its lines in other places. In a rich text box, each point prints in the space of one line, and words that don’t fit on it are left out: keep each point short enough for one line, or make the box wider. Check the PDF before you send it.

Text in any other language prints as typed, in the same fonts as the fields and the certificate of a signed document. The exceptions are emoji and a few scripts there’s no font for yet, such as Myanmar, Khmer, Lao and Tibetan: each of those characters prints as its code, such as [U+1F600]. A box with such text prints as the editor lays it out, a rich text box’s points on as many lines as they need. The editor shows other scripts in a font on your device, and bold a shade lighter than it prints; either can be a little wider or narrower than what prints, so leave a text box some room to spare. A box, list, table, header or footer that mixes English with another script, or with an emoji, prints that way only if all of its English words and figures still fit. Where the other script would push one of them out of the box, or the box is too short for a line, the whole box prints as English text always has, and the other script is left out. So does a text box, a rich text box or a table with more than 50,000 characters, or a header or footer with more than 1,000, and so does a box in another script that would take a document’s boxes in other scripts past 500,000 characters between them. Give such a box plenty of room.

Pages

Under each page, Rotate, Blank page after and Delete act on that page. On a wide screen, the panel beside the pages has the same for the page you’re on: Rotate 90°, Insert blank page after and Delete page. Deleting a page asks first, and takes what you added to it too. A document’s only page can’t be deleted. Pages can’t be moved to another place in the document.

Save and download

  • Download gives you the PDF with everything you added baked in.
  • Save keeps the PDF under Saved PDFs, shared with everyone in your workspace, with what you added still movable the next time it’s opened. The words under a white-out box, a filled rectangle, or a text box or rich text with a background are taken out of the file as it’s saved, as they are when you download it. Each saved PDF keeps only its latest save. Save as new saves a copy as a new PDF, leaving the one you opened as it is. A workspace can keep 200 saved PDFs, and 1 GB in all.
  • If someone else saved the PDF after you opened it, your save is refused and says who: choose Save mine as a new PDF to keep both.
  • Under Saved PDFs, each one has Open, Send for signing, Rename and Delete. Deleting one deletes it for good: see Keeping and deleting documents.
  • Send for signing starts a draft envelope with its own copy of the PDF, white-out applied, and opens it. On Free it waits, as New envelope does, while 3 drafts are held, or once the month’s 3 are sent unless the workspace has single envelopes to send on.
  • From a draft envelope, Save to document puts the result back into the envelope’s document and takes you back to the envelope.

Nothing is kept unless you choose Save. If you’re signed out while editing a file from your computer, the page asks you to open the file again.

If your plan changes

A workspace that moves to Free keeps its saved PDFs: it can still send, rename or delete them, but not open them. To keep a copy of your own, open one and choose Download while the workspace is on Solo or above.