Infix PDF Editor 7.3.3

It is refreshing to come across a PDF editor that works like a standard word processor and, in some ways, even more intuitively and efficiently than Adobe Acrobat itself. Infix PDF Editor has been designed to make PDF documents flexible and easy to edit, allowing you to change entire sentences and paragraphs without altering the original layout. Besides, it comes with tools to determine the reading order and to turn image-based PDFs into readable text.

PDF editors that promise you a Word-like experience are not new. What is new is the fact that, for a change, Infix PDF Editor not only promises Word-like ease of use and functionality but also delivers them successfully. Most PFD tools call themselves “editors” just because they let you add comments in windows that are placed on top of the existing text or because you can change words or lines in a more or less convincing way. However, very few of them will let you reflow the edited text in a way that follows the original layout and doesn’t destroy the page appearance, just as you do when editing a Word document. Even fewer will allow you to revise a document and mark the changes similarly as what you can do with the Track Changes feature in Word.

PDF files are particularly difficult for persons with a print disability, as PDF stores text in tags that may or may not reflect what you see on the screen. A correct and logical reading order is paramount for those using screen readers, and is one of those features that PDF tend not to care much about when building a new document. Columns, sidebars, images and their captions, etc., need to be read in a specific order for the text to make sense, and in this feature Infix PDF Editor excels like no other. The program combines text reflowing, text threads, and paragraph numbering to offer those with a visual impairment a sensible reading order of not-so-straightforward texts. To top these “accessibility features” off, the program can turn any image-based PDF into a fully editable file thanks to its OCR support, thus allowing persons with a print disability to read the document and all users to edit it easily.

Of course, this PDF editor comes with all the editing functions you can think of – watermarking, find and replace text, spell checker, Bates numbering, form filling tools, PDF creation from the most common text-based formats, PDF conversion to EPUB or HTML, and many more. All of them work seamlessly, making you forget that you are actually dealing with a rigid PDF file. When it comes to the license, it works on a subscription basis – a system I’m not too fond of particularly, but that other users may find useful for their purposes.