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Edit PDFs easily with PDFpen! Add text, images and signatures. Make corrections. Fill out PDF forms. Merge, delete and reorder pages.

support

help

PDFpen 4 and PDFpenPro 4 come with extensive online help, which you can access from the Help menu in the program. You can also view the latest Help online or download a PDF version. (PDFpen 3 Help PDF is still available.) We frequently update the Help based on your feedback.

faq

Read the Frequently Asked Questions below. Your question might already be answered.

can't find your answer?

If you can't find the answer you need in the Help or the FAQs, send an email to PDFpen Support. SmileOnMyMac's responsive support team will answer your email as quickly as possible!

We try to answer all our support mail within 24 hours — and most of the time much sooner than that! If you've emailed us and have not had a response within 24 hours, your email may not have reached us for some reason. Please resend it.

"Thank you so much for your reply! Everything you told me worked like a charm. To be honest...I didn't even expect a reply. I've emailed companies so many times and as far as I can recall...this is the very first time someone ever even bothered to reply at all. You not only replied...but you replied promptly—and—actually solved my problems!"
—Doug Hoyer, Kailua, Hawaii

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I install PDFpen?

See the installation instructions here.

How do I buy PDFpen?

Buy PDFpen now from our web store. To buy from within the product itself, or via fax or phone, click here for instructions.

I have more than one computer. Does a single license allow me to install on all of them?

Yes, if you are the only user of those computers. If you have multiple computers used by more than one person, you can purchase a Family Pack license, which covers 5 computers in the same household. (Click here for more information.)

How does PDFpen compare to Adobe Acrobat?

See this comparison chart of PDF editing features.

What is the difference between PDFpen and PDFpenPro?

PDFpenPro has all the PDF editing features of PDFpen. PDFpenPro also has the ability to create cross-platform fillable PDF forms and PDF document Table of Contents. More information about PDFpenPro.

What if I don't have Mac OS X 10.4 or later?

For Mac OS X 10.2.5 - 10.3.9, please download PDFpen 2.4.3.

How can I get the Text tool to stay selected when I am filling in forms?

By default, the Text tool will revert to the Select tool after each use. To override this, double-click the Text tool. The Text tool will stay active and you'll be able to fill out the whole form without switching back and forth between tools.

Can PDFpen do actual text editing: replace or change wording, change paragraph spacing, change font type, etc?

Yes. Select the text you want to modify, click the "Correct Text" button in the toolbar, and the selected text will be replaced by an editable text block.

I can't select the text in my document. Can I use OCR to convert it?

If you cannot select the text in your PDF, it may be a scanned document. In PDFpen 4.X, you can perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the document to convert the text into machine-readable characters. Choose Edit > OCR ... to start the process. After the OCR is done, you can select and edit the text as you would normally.

Note: OCR will not produce an exact rendering of the text. You will need to proofread and edit the results. Some scanned documents perform better than others; see the PDFpenPro Help for tips.

I started typing some text using the Text tool, but it is too wide. I have resized my text box, but when I try to type in it after resizing, it reverts to its original size. How can I keep the new size?

Select the text box, and choose "Edit->Wrap Text" from the main menu. (Note: If you use the text box tool to drag out a text box, instead of just clicking to create a text box, Wrap Text is the default behavior.)

How do I reduce the size of my PDF file?

When saving using File -> Save (or File -> Save as...), select "Reduce File Size" under "Quartz Filter". All the images in the file will be compressed. Note also that your PDF file will be flattened and you can no longer edit imprints. You can change the quality of the compression used by adding a new Quartz filter with the quality level you want.

I want to password-protect a PDF document. Can I do that with PDFpen?

Yes. Choose File -> Save (or File -> Save as...) from the PDFpen menu. Check the box next to "Secure Document with Password" and enter your desired password in the field, then re-enter it in the Verify field, before saving the PDF.

How do I flatten a PDF so that the elements I've added in PDFpen are not editable?

Choose Print from the File menu, and then click Save as PDF. The resulting file will not be editable in most PDF viewers. It will still be editable in PDFpen 3.X / PDFpenPro 3.X and later versions, because these versions allow you to edit any images in a PDF file, including ones that have been added by PDFpen and PDFpenPro.

I launched PDFPen, but nothing happened. What's wrong?

Look for the PDFpen icon is in the Dock. If you click you'll see that the upper-left text in the menu bar changes to "PDFpen". To proceed, select: "File >Open..." from the menu. PDFpen needs you to open a PDF file to begin. If you prefer to start from scratch select "File >New Blank Document" and then select "Edit >Insert Blank Page".

Why is there a SmileOnMyMac logo on my PDF when I save it?

Documents saved by the PDFpen demo will be given this watermark. The only way to remove the watermark is to purchase a license to PDFpen (SmileOnMyMac Store) and register the application. When you open a watermarked document with a registered copy of PDFpen, the watermark will be removed automatically and you can simply save again to permanently remove it. Do not save watermarked documents using File->Print->PDF->Save as PDF... or the watermark will remain permanently as though you'd printed to a physical printer.

Why can't I print or modify my document in PDFPen?

Authors of PDF documents may set permissions separate from those in the operating system. These permissions govern the abilities to edit, save and print documents, and PDFpen respects these permissions. To edit you will need to contact the original author of the document and ask for a version without restrictions.

What should I do when one of my PDFs is crashing PDFPen?

The original document may be off-spec, or you may have uncovered a bug. Please try opening the original in PDFpen then do File->Print->PDF->Save as PDF... Open the newly-saved document and perform your edits. If that works, please consider sending us the original document so that we can analyze why and hopefully make PDFpen handle that more gracefully in a future release.

Why are my pages not rendering in order?

PDFpen draws thumbnail images of document pages in the background, and the most recently requested sequence of images (eg. where I've just scrolled to) is drawn first. If you have two processors you'll find that pages are frequently rendered out of order as PDFpen utilizes both of them to generate the thumbnails.

Which OCR engine does PDFpen use?

On Intel-based Macs, PDFpen uses the OmniPage OCR engine, version 15.5, from Nuance Communications, Inc. For more info on OmniPage, please choose Help -> License Agreement from the menu or visit http://www.scansoft.com/omnipage/capturesdk/linux/ and note that not all features of the SDK are licensed for use in PDFpen.

On PowerPC-based Macs, PDFpen uses the Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine. For more info on Tesseract, please choose Help -> License Agreement from the menu or visit http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/

More questions?

Please send us a detailed email and our fast and friendly support team will respond.

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System Requirements:
PDFpen 4.x and PDFpenPro 4.x require Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger) or later and are compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). For 10.2.5 - 10.3.9, please download PDFpen 2.4.3 or PDFpenPro 2.4.3