Libre PDF Editor: LibreOffice and Beyond for Free Editing

LibreOffice, the most popular open source office suite, is often recommended as a free PDF editor because its Draw component can import and modify PDF files. LibreOffice Draw treats each PDF page as a collection of objects — text blocks, images, and vector shapes — that can be individually selected, moved, edited, or deleted. This approach works reasonably well for simple PDFs with straightforward layouts: single-column text documents, basic forms, and uncomplicated graphics. However, Draw's PDF import process has well-documented limitations. Complex layouts with multiple columns, headers and footers, embedded fonts, form fields, and mixed content types frequently break during import, producing reflowed text that looks noticeably different from the original. Font substitution is common, text alignment shifts unpredictably, and multi-page documents with consistent formatting can end up looking inconsistent across pages. For users who primarily work with simple PDFs, LibreOffice Draw is a viable free option. For those who need reliable editing of complex documents — contracts, reports, presentations, forms — browser-based tools like pdfeditor.website provide more consistent results. The browser editor handles the PDF format's complexities more gracefully, preserving formatting across diverse document types while also offering format conversion, digital signatures, and page management in a single interface.