NOTHING LEAVES YOUR COMPUTER
Edit a legal document PDF without it leaving your computer
A court form, a witness statement, a settlement agreement or a power of attorney has arrived as a PDF, and it needs filling in, correcting, redacting or signing before it goes anywhere. It is privileged, confidential or both, which rules out every tool that begins by uploading it. This one works on your own computer.
- The PDF opens from your own computer into this tab and is never uploaded. There is no copy on a server, so there is nothing for a breach to find or a disclosure request to reach.
- Fill in the printed fields, correct a name or a date in the body text, black out what must not be seen, and sign, all in the one editor.
- Free to edit. Downloading needs a free account and starts at £0.99 for your first week.
اسحب ملف PDF وأفلته هنا
خاص: تجري المعالجة في متصفحك
هل ينجح هذا مع ملفك؟
| ملفك | ينجح هنا؟ | ما الذي يحدث |
|---|---|---|
| A court form or an official application sent as a PDF, with real fields or without | نعم | If it has real fields, type into them. If the lines are only printed, Add Text puts your answer on the line. Either way the file is read and rewritten in this tab. |
| A draft agreement from the other side with a wrong name, date or figure in it | نعم | Click the wording with Select and retype it in the typeface the page already carries. Change a party name with find and replace and it changes in every clause at once. |
| A witness statement or an exhibit with passages to black out before disclosure | نعم | Drag Redact over each passage. On export that page is rebuilt as a picture without them, so the words are removed from the file rather than covered. طمس المعلومات في PDF |
| A scanned exhibit, a faxed form or a photograph of a letter | بعد خطوة واحدة | Nothing in a scan is selectable until OCR has read it. Run it through the scanned-PDF editor first; the reading happens on your computer as well. تعديل PDF ممسوح ضوئيًا |
| A PDF from a solicitor or a bank that only opens with a password you were given | بعد خطوة واحدة | The editor cannot open an encrypted file and says so. Take the password off first, which also happens on your computer, then open the unlocked copy here. فتح قفل PDF |
| A document the other side has to sign as well | ليس هنا | Their signature needs a signing link, and a link needs the PDF hosted in your account, which is the one part of peadf that uploads. Use it knowing that, or send the file yourself. إرسال PDF للتوقيع |
من يصل إلى هذه الصفحة
A litigant in person with a claim form due by four
The court’s PDF has boxes you cannot type in, and the help desk said to complete it on screen.
A trainee solicitor preparing a disclosure bundle
Two hundred pages, three names to take out of every one of them, and a rule that nothing on this matter touches a website.
An HR manager with a settlement agreement
The leaver’s name is wrong on page one and the signing meeting is at ten.
An executor with a probate form
The estate’s figures changed when the valuation came in, and the form was saved flat.
A company secretary correcting a board resolution
A director’s middle name is wrong, and it has to be right before it is filed.
الطريقة خطوة بخطوة
- 1
Open the PDF and go straight to the part that needs you
Choose the file or drop it on the box above. Your browser reads it from your own disk into this tab and sends nothing. Use the find bar to reach a party name, a clause number or a date.
- 2
Fill it in with Add Text, correct it with Select
On a form, type into its fields, or pick Add Text and click a printed line where there are none. In the body of an agreement, pick Select, click the wording and retype it: it keeps its own font and size, and a longer sentence moves the lines below it down.
- 3
Take out what must not be disclosed with Redact
Drag a box over each name, figure or paragraph. Redact is the tool for it, not Rectangle: a drawn box covers, Redact removes, and the exported page carries no trace of the words beneath.
- 4
Sign, read it page by page, then export
Pick Signature to draw or type your name and drag it to the line, and Check to tick a declaration. Read every page after an edit, because a longer clause moves what follows it. Export builds the finished PDF in this tab, and downloading it needs a free account, from £0.99 for your first week.
ما يمكنك تغييره
- Fill in the 23 boxes of a claim form that was issued without real fields
- Correct a claimant's surname in the 6 places it appears across a 14-page witness statement
- Black out two account numbers and a home address in an exhibit before it is disclosed
- Change a settlement figure of £12,500 to £14,000 in clause 3 and again in the schedule of payments
- Move a completion date from 31 March to 14 April in a draft agreement and in its side letter
- Add the date and a signature to the statement of truth on page 9
- Tick the 4 declarations on a power of attorney application and initial the margin of each page
- Replace the name of a dissolved firm with its successor on the 3 pages of a letter of engagement
كيف يعمل ذلك فعلًا
Redaction here is a different operation from drawing a box. A rectangle, a highlight or a white-out shape is an object placed on top of the page, and the text underneath it is still in the file for a select-all, a search or a screen reader to find. When you export with Redact boxes on a page, that page is rebuilt as a picture drawn without the words inside the boxes, and the page is replaced with the picture. There is no object to move aside and no text beneath, which is why a redacted page can no longer be searched: the words are not hidden, they are not there. Test it in the exported file by searching for a word you removed.
What travels while you work is the same as for any site, and none of it is the document. Your browser fetches our code once, and analytics counts anonymous events: that a file was opened, its size to the nearest tenth of a megabyte, which kinds of edit were made. No file name, no text, no page. Pressing Export asks our server whether your account may download, a question that carries your account and not the file. Reading a scanned page for the first time fetches a recognition engine once, then reads the scan on your computer. The document itself is uploaded only if you ask for a share link or a signing link.
لماذا تفسد الطرق المعتادة هذا الملف؟
Upload it to the first online PDF editor you find
The file is sent to a server you do not control, changed there and sent back, and a copy of a privileged document now sits under somebody else’s retention policy. If a client or a court later asks who has had it, you cannot answer.
Convert it to Word and edit there
Numbered clauses renumber themselves, defined terms lose their capitals and a schedule comes back as a table held together with tabs. You spend the afternoon comparing the conversion against the original instead of making the one change.
Draw a black box over it with a rectangle tool
A box covers the words; it does not remove them. Select-all and copy in any reader lifts the text from under it, which is how redaction failures end up in the news.
Print it, write on it, sign it and scan it back
The scan has no selectable text, so the other side cannot search it and your own side has to OCR it later. It also passes through a copier that may keep an image of every page it has handled.
Email it to someone with the right software
There are now two more copies, one in each mailbox, plus whatever each mailbox backs itself up to. Confidentiality is lost by multiplication, not by malice.
ما لا يمكن فعله هنا
- Editing is free. Downloading the finished document needs a free account, £0.99 for your first week and then a plan from £11.99 a year. The account holds your email address and your subscription, never your documents.
- The document’s properties come through as they were. A Title, Author or Subject that the drafter’s software wrote is still in the file, and only the modified date changes, so check the properties panel in your own reader before anything is served or disclosed.
- A redacted page is rebuilt as a picture and loses its selectable and searchable text. That is the price of a removal that cannot be undone, and it applies to the whole page, not only to the box.
- Nothing renumbers. Insert a paragraph and the next one is still 4.3, and every cross reference to a moved clause still points at its old number. Check them by hand.
- A signature made here is a picture of a signature. It is not witnessed, not certified and not a qualified electronic signature, so a deed, a will or a court document that calls for one of those is not signed by it.
- We cannot say whether an amendment is effective, whether a redaction is complete enough for disclosure, or whether a form is the right form. That is for whoever is advising you.
حين لا تعود المسألة مسألة تنسيق
This page is for preparing a document you are entitled to prepare: your own form, a draft you are party to, a bundle you are responsible for. It is not for altering a document after it has been signed, served or filed, and not for making a redaction look complete when it is not. Where a document calls for a witness, wet ink or a qualified signature, a drawn one does not meet that, and we cannot tell you what a court or a counterparty will accept.
أسئلة يطرحها الناس
Does a privileged document stay privileged if I edit it here?
We cannot give legal advice, and whether privilege survives a particular step is a question for whoever is advising you. What we can say is what happens to the file: it is read, changed and rewritten by your own browser, and no part of it is sent to us or to anyone else. There is no third party holding a copy, which is usually the fact that matters. The two carve-outs are a share link and a signing link, both of which do upload the file, and both of which you have to ask for.
Is a black box drawn with Rectangle a real redaction?
No. A rectangle, a highlight set to black or a white-out box all sit on top of the text, and the words stay in the file underneath, where a select-all, a search or a screen reader finds them. Redact is different: on export the page is rebuilt as a picture that was drawn without those words, so there is nothing beneath the box to recover. The cost is that the page loses its selectable text. For disclosure, use Redact, then test the exported file by searching it for a word you removed.
Can I file the exported PDF with a court or a registry?
An edited page from this editor is still ordinary PDF with real text, apart from a page you redacted, which becomes a picture. What we cannot do is tell you the rules of a particular court or portal: a size limit, a naming convention, a requirement for searchable text on every page, or for a certificate-based signature some portals insist on. Check the practice direction or the portal’s own guidance, and run the exported file through whatever checker it offers before the deadline, not after.
The document has a Title and an Author in its properties. Do you remove them?
No. The file’s properties come through as they were, with only the modified date changed. We do not strip the Title, Author, Subject or Keywords, so the name of the person or the firm whose software made the original can still be in the file. Before a document is disclosed or served, open its properties in your own reader and clear what should not travel. That matters most for a document you received from the other side and are now sending on.
Can I change a party’s name everywhere at once?
Yes, within the lines the editor can read. The find bar searches every page and can replace a word or a phrase across the document, so a claimant’s surname or a company name changes in each clause, the definitions and the schedule in one go. Each replaced line keeps its own typeface and re-wraps if the new name is longer. Read the result afterwards: a name inside a scanned exhibit, a header drawn as a picture or a signature block is not text and will not change.
Does it work with no internet connection, in a courtroom or at a client’s office?
Once the pages are showing, yes. Switch the connection off and retyping, redacting, filling and signing all still work, which is the simplest proof that the file is not on a server. Two things need the connection back: reading a scanned page for the first time, which fetches the recognition engine once, and the download itself, which checks your account. Open the document while you still have a signal and the rest of the work is yours offline.
Can I sign a deed or a statutory declaration here?
Not in the way those documents require. A signature made here is a picture of your signature placed on the page, which many agreements and forms accept, but a deed needs a witness, a statutory declaration has to be made in front of someone authorised to take it, and some court papers call for a certificate-based signature. None of that is produced by drawing your name in a browser. Use the editor to prepare such a document, then sign it the way its own rules say.
Open the document here, do what it needs, and check the exported file in your own reader before it goes anywhere. Nothing of it has been uploaded, nothing is waiting on a server to be deleted, and the only copies that exist are the ones you choose to send.
فتح ملف PDF