How to Redline a PDF? (Step by Step Guide)

Redline is a feature often found in Word documents when working on different versions and multiple contributors. Since PDF is a widely accepted document format, redline feature is highly anticipated in it for higher productivity but most users cannot find this feature in their PDF tools.

So, in this article we will share 3 proven ways with complete guides on how to redline a PDF.

Part 1. Can You Redline a PDF?

Yes, most PDF tools provide a strikethrough feature which puts a red line through the contents of a PDF document. Originally, in Word documents when you remove some content and add new in its place the original content gets redlined instead of being permanently removed so other contributors can review it.

On the other hand, in a PDF document you have to do it manually by first adding redline through strikethrough feature and then adding new content next to it. Hence, the final result is the same as in Word but with a slightly different process.

Part 2. How to Redline a PDF Document? (3 Ways)

So, if you want to redline a PDF document then we have 3 proven ways that will work for you regardless of your devices and OS. These 3 even include free and paid options for offline and online usage.

Way 1. How to Redline a PDF on Windows, Mac, Android, and IOS With UPDF?

The first tool of choice for redlining a PDF document is UPDF. UPDF is a PDF editing suite with every feature that you require for editing your PDF documents and a lot more. In fact, it is the best tool to redline your PDFs whether you are on Windows, MacOS, iOS, or Android since it works flawlessly on all of them. The best part about UPDF is that you can redline the old content and add new content by using its Edit PDF features.

Apart from that, UPDF offers a bunch of annotation features including strikethrough, notes, comments, stickers, etc. that you can use to keep track of changes made to different revisions and versions of your PDFs. Additionally, you get features like underlining, or adding a squiggly line for text. UPDF not only takes care of your redlining requirements but also brings many more features so you must download and give it a try.

Step 1: Launch UPDF on PC by using desktop icon and click "Open File" to open PDF document that you want to redline in reader view.

Step 2: Click "Comment" from left menu and select a text by highlighting it with the click of cursor. A pop-up menu will show different tools including a "Strikethrough" button. Click it and the text will be redlined. You also get the option to pick from different colors for the Strikethrough feature. An alternative method is to first click "Strikethrough" button from top bar and then selecting text with click and hold of your cursor.

Step 3. Now, you can click on the "Sticky Note" to add new contents or go to "Edit PDF"at the left side panel, double click on the text with redline and add new contents after the ones with redline.

While UPDF makes it this easy to redline PDFs, it can assist you in many other tasks with its other features as listed below:

• UPDF AI helps you translate, summarize, review, and rewrite content in PDF documents.
• UPDF Cloud keeps your PDFs organized in dedicated storage and synchronizes all your docs across your devices
• UPDF OCR works with over 99% accuracy for 38 different languages and makes scanned docs and images editable
• UPDF gives complete PDF editing experience with editing text, images, and links
• UPDF makes it easy to organize, merge, and split PDF documents and pages.
• UPDF offers read along and several similar features.
• UPDF AI helps you generate mind map to visualize your PDF content and ideas, making it easy to explore and connect key concepts across your documents.

Download UPDF now to get access to all these and many other features by purchasing UPDF Pro. Learn more about functionalities of UPDF from this Laptopmedia review.

If you are interested in watching the video on how to annotate a PDF, here is the video for you.

Also Read: How to Redline a Contract in PDF/Word? (Step by Step)

Way 2. How to Redline a PDF in Adobe?

Adobe is one of the most expensive, most premium and professional standard PDF editing tools. It comes with all the in-depth editing features so you can use it to redline your PDFs. Adobe takes care of your most basic and complex PDF editing tasks and the good thing about it is that it works both offline on PCs running on different operating systems and smartphones. Moreover, it comes with its web interface as well, which allows for online usage without any installation.

While it performs very well and offers lots of capabilities, it comes with a slightly complex user interface and the price is not feasible for most users. However, if you don't have any concerns about the pricing or learning curve, you may follow the steps below to redline PDFs with Adobe Acrobat.

Step 1: Open Adobe Acrobat software on your PC and press "Ctrl + O" on keyboard to open a PDF document. Click "Tools" from top left corner and select "Comment" to get the redlining feature in Adobe.

Step 2: click, hold, and drag the cursor over text to select it then right click to open options. There you will see "Strikethrough Text" option. Upon clicking it the text in your PDF will be redlined and you can change its color by right clicking on redlined text and going to properties.

Step 3. Now, you can use the sticky note or add text feature to add the new content.

Way 3. How to Redline a PDF Free Online with Sejda

There are lots of online web-based PDF editing tools that are available but our top choice for redlining your PDFs is Sejda. It provides its PDF Editing features for free with great reliability and security. Sejda offers privacy and security for your documents by immediately deleting your document from its servers right after processing is complete for you.

The redline feature is available in Edit PDF option in Sejda while it offers a lot of other features like merging, splitting, compressing, converting, etc. Below are detailed steps on how you can use Sejda to redline your PDF documents online for free.

Step 1: Go to Sejda PDF Editing page and click "Upload PDF File". You can upload from Google Drive OneDrive Dropbox Local storage or paste a link to that PDF file.

Step 2: After Sejda loads your PDF and its PDF Editing tools, you will click "Annotate" and click on "Red" circle against Strikethrough option. Now hold click and drag cursor over any text in PDF to redline it. Once you are done you will click "Apply Changes" at the bottom and your PDF with redline will be ready for downloading or uploading to cloud storage.

Step 3. Click "Text" to add new content to the PDF.

Conclusion

With 3 working ways on how to redline a PDF we hope that you can easily use this amazing feature when reviewing and editing a PDF to prevent the old content from getting deleted. In this way, you can be more productive, and your documents will contain much better information. The best tool for utilizing this feature that you can download on all devices for seamless performance is UPDF. With its in-depth editing features and useful AI features, working on PDFs will be much more productive.