THE HONESTY PAGE
What It Can't Do
A tool you can trust tells you its limits before you pay, not after. Here is what PDFByHand does not do, why not, and what to do instead. If a job on this list is the job you need, this is not the tool for it — and we would rather say so now than take your money and waste your time.
Retype or edit the words already on a page
Why: A finished PDF is a printed page in digital form. Its words sit in place on the page, not in an open draft waiting to be changed.
What to do instead: Change the source document the PDF was made from, or ask the sender for a corrected copy. For work around the page — filling, signing, merging, splitting, ordering — the bench on this site handles it.
True redaction
Why: Drawing a black box over words does not remove them. The text stays underneath the box, and anyone who can copy text out of the file can read what sits under it. Black boxes lie, and people have been caught out by exactly that.
What to do instead: Use the destructive route: print the page, black it out on paper, and scan it back — or use a desktop tool made to permanently remove the content. Never send a file redacted with boxes alone.
Add a password to a PDF
Why: Adding password protection is not offered here.
What to do instead: If a file must not be read by others, do not send it by ordinary email. Use the secure sharing route your workplace, bank, or office provides, and ask what they accept.
Open a PDF that needs a real password
Why: A password-protected file cannot be opened without its password, and this site does not open such files. That protection exists to be respected, not worked around.
What to do instead: Ask the person or office who sent the file for the password, or for an unprotected copy. If it is your own file, open it with the password in the program that set it.
Certificate digital signatures
Why: Signing here is a visual signature: your signature drawn or typed and placed as an image on the page. It is not a certificate-based digital signature backed by a checked identity record.
What to do instead: For everyday paperwork, a visual signature serves well — use the free Sign PDF tool. When a bank, court, or government office names a certificate-based signature, use the service they name.
Perfect PDF-to-Word conversion
Why: A PDF holds a finished page layout, and that layout does not survive a move into a flowing word-processor document. Columns, tables, and spacing break apart when text is poured into a new shape.
What to do instead: Use Extract Text on this site to get the words out cleanly, in reading order, and lay them out fresh in your document. The words come across; the old page's layout stays with the PDF.
Instant OCR of a 200-page scan on a phone
Why: Reading a photographed page and turning it into text is heavy work, page by page. A phone can do it for short documents, but a 200-page scan would be slow and hard on the device.
What to do instead: Use the Toolkit's OCR on a computer for long scans, where it has the room to work. For a few scanned pages, the phone is fine — just expect it to take a little time.
Try it on the bench
The free tools are open now — one file, one job, no sign-up. See all 11 free tools or start with Merge PDF.