Common PDF problems, fixed

Most PDF problems are not faults in the file. They are a document doing exactly what it was built to do, in a situation nobody planned for: a scan that has no text in it, a form whose answers live outside the page, a permission flag that greys out the print button. Once you know which of those you are looking at, the fix is usually one step.

So each page here starts with the cause rather than the cure. Knowing why a PDF will not let you copy text tells you whether you need OCR or need to clear a restriction — and those are different jobs with different outcomes. Guessing between them is how people end up running a document through four tools and still having the same problem.

Every fix runs in your own browser. Nothing is uploaded, which matters here more than on most sites: the documents that go wrong are usually the ones you would least want to hand to a stranger — a bank statement that will not open, a contract you cannot print, a scanned passport that is too big to email.

If your problem is not listed, the tools page groups everything by job, and each tool says plainly what it cannot do.