How to Edit PDF with LibreOffice: Full Guide

We’ve all been there—needing to edit a PDF but cannot find the right tool for the job.

PDFs are essential in professional and academic tasks. But, despite their universal popularity, finding a reliable tool to edit them without paying a hefty price can feel impossible. That’s where LibreOffice can help you!

This article will show you how to edit PDFs with LibreOffice in easy steps. We will also introduce a better alternative—UPDF. With professional PDF tools, it can be your go-to tool for all PDF editing needs. Click below to download it and get started with a free trial.

Now, let’s explore LibreOffice and its PDF editing capabilities.

Part 1. How to Edit PDF with LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a free and open-source office suite that offers an excellent alternative to Microsoft Office. It includes a full set of applications such as Writer for documents, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for presentations, and more.

You can edit PDFs with the LibreOffice Draw module. It allows you to create anything like simple sketches or complex diagrams as well as edit PDF text and images. You can also annotate with pencil, shapes, and comments.

Steps to Edit PDF with LibreOffice

Step 1. Launch LibreOffice and click the “Open” button in the top left to import your PDF.

Step 2. After uploading your PDF, select the text you want to modify by clicking on it. Then, type in new text or select and delete existing one.

Step 3. To adjust the text style, highlight the text you want to change and go to the right panel. From here, select your desired font size, style, alignment, spacing, etc.

Step 4. To edit an image, select it. Then, pull the image's border to resize it to the desired dimension.

Step 5. Go to the right panel. Then, use the options under the “Line,” “Shadow,” and “Position and Size” sections to add borders and shadows or adjust transparency and corner styles.

Step 6. After finishing your edits, click “File” from the top menu. Choose “Export As” and then “Export As PDF.” Then click “Export” from the popup to save your document.

Limitations of Editing PDFs with LibreOffice

If you want to edit PDFs in LibreOffice, here are some limitations you should know:

• Missing PDF images: LibreOffice sometimes fails to load embedded images in the PDF and replaces them with blank spaces. Moreover, it may change the original layout of more complex PDFs.
• Limited Advanced Features: It lacks advanced tools for editing professional documents. You need to install third-party extensions to access more features like adding links, cropping pages, organizing pages, adding watermarks, and more.
• User Experience: While LibreOffice is easy to use, the interface can be confusing for beginners. Moreover, editing large PDFs can slow down the app.

With these limitations, LibreOffice may not be the best choice for editing PDFs. If you want a more reliable PDF editor that can handle large PDFs without any issues, try UPDF. Continue reading to gain more understanding of it.

Part 2. UPDF: A Comprehensive Solution for PDF Editing

If you are looking for a comprehensive solution to edit your PDFs, UPDF is the ideal choice. This professional, AI-driven PDF editor is designed to help you work with your PDFs effortlessly.

With UPDF, you can easily edit the PDF text, images, links, and all other PDF elements. Unlike how you edit PDFs using LibreOffice, UPDF also lets you edit scanned documents.

In addition to editing PDFs, it offers advanced features such as annotation tools, password protection, redaction, and more. These features make it an excellent tool for both personal and professional documents.

UPDF also provides an intuitive user experience with a minimal design and quick access to all its tools. Let’s see how it helps you edit your PDF documents.

Steps to Edit PDF Documents with UPDF

Step 1. Download and install UPDF on your computer. You can click the button shown below to download it right away.

Step 2. Once UPDF opens, click “Open File” to upload your document. Then click “Edit PDF,” located on the left.

Step 3. Now, your PDF text and images will become editable. Click on the text you want to edit and change. Then, write new content in the text box or delete the text from it.

Step 4. To customize the text style, select the text and use the toolbar that appears to adjust the text style, size, color, and alignment.

Step 5. To edit images, click the image and use the options in the toolbar to rotate, extract, crop, or replace the image. You can also drag the borders of the image to resize it.

Step 6. To add new content to the PDF, head over to the top toolbar. Then select Text, Image, or Link and click anywhere on the page to add the respective content.

That’s how to edit editable PDFs in UPDF. But what if you need to edit a scanned document? UPDF makes it possible. Read on to explore how to go about it.

Steps to Edit Scanned PDFs with UPDF

Step 1. Open your scanned PDF in UPDF and select “Recognize Text Using OCR” from the right.

Step 2. Choose the “Searchable PDF” option as the document type.

Step 3. Adjust other settings such as layout, then, choose document language. For example, here is to choose “English” as the document language, and select page range. Then click “Perform OCR.”

Step 4. Once the OCR process is complete, select “Edit PDF” from the left sidebar and click the text you need to edit. When you finish editing, you can save the PDF.

Want to have a more detailed guide for editing PDFs? You can watch the video below.

Want to know why to use UPDF instead of other PDF editor tools? Here are the reasons.

Advantages of Editing PDFs with UPDF:

• Format Retention: It does not change the layout and structure of your document..
• Comprehensive Features: It offers professional tools like OCR, batch processing, annotations, eSigning, and more.
• Intuitive Interface: You can quickly access all the tools without going through extensive lists or menus.
• High Performance: It uses minimal system resources and works fast with large and complex files.
• Multi-Platform Support: You can use it on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android platforms.
• AI-Powered Excellence: It has an AI assistant built on GPT-4o for smarter PDF handling.

Part 3. Why UPDF is a Better Choice to Edit PDFs: A Detailed Comparison

If you’re wondering whether to edit PDFs in LibreOffice or with UPDF, here’s a detailed comparison to help you decide.

The above comparison shows that UPDF is a far better PDF management solution than LibreOffice. It offers a complete and user-friendly solution to handle your PDFs.

Unlike LibreOffice, it doesn’t rely on external tools for tasks like merging, splitting, or OCR. It simplifies your workflow with built-in cloud storage and batch processing, making it a more efficient solution.

Click the download button below to try these features! Read this review article to explore more of its capabilities.

Part 4. Conclusion

That wraps up how to edit PDFs with LibreOffice. While LibreOffice is a free tool to fine-tune and edit your documents, it is not the best solution for advanced editing. If you want to handle your PDFs professionally without any editing limitations, we suggest using UPDF. It lets you edit all elements of your documents without any formatting issues. Download and try it to get started with a free trial today!