Zoho PDF Editor Desktop – User Guide

Overview

Zoho PDF Editor Desktop is a lightweight, offline PDF tool for viewing, editing, annotating, securing, and exporting PDFs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Getting started

System requirements

Downloading and installing the app

On Linux (DEB)

GUI method (Debian-based distributions):

1. Download the .deb package for Zoho PDF Editor.
2. Right-click the downloaded .deb file and open it with your Software Center.
3. Click Install and authenticate if prompted.

Terminal method:

sudo dpkg -i ./zoho-pdf-editor-x64.deb

To uninstall:

sudo dpkg -r zoho-pdf-editor

After installation, launch Zoho PDF Editor from your app launcher.

Features available

Editing and viewing

• Text: Add text boxes with options for font, size, bold, italic, and color. Original PDF text is not directly editable.
• Text selection and copy: Select and copy text from PDFs.
• Text search: Search for text within a PDF.
• Images: Insert, move, resize, and rotate images.
• Page operations: Insert, delete, rotate, duplicate, reorder, split, merge, and replace pages.
• Watermarks: Add text or image watermarks in centered, diagonal, or tiled layouts.
• Shapes: Add cross and check marks.
• Freehand drawing: Draw directly on PDF content.
• Barcode and QR code: Add barcodes and QR codes to PDFs.
• Themes: Use light and dark modes.

File management

• Open PDF files, including password-protected PDFs.
• Set or remove passwords.
• Compress PDF files to reduce file size.
• Organize pages.

Annotations and comments

• Add sticky notes, text, highlights, underlines, strikethroughs, rectangles, ellipses, links, and file attachments.
• Export an annotation summary as a text-based list.

Export

• Export PDFs, including flattened PDFs, as PDF, TXT, PNG, or JPEG.
• Word, Excel, and PowerPoint export is not available in this phase.

Limitations

• Original page text and embedded fonts cannot be modified. Headers, footers, and page cropping are not supported.
• Bookmarks are view-only. You cannot add, edit, or delete bookmarks.
• Digital signatures and collaboration features are not currently available.

Editing PDFs: Basic workflow

Open a file

• From the Dashboard, open and import a PDF or choose a PDF.
• Right-click a PDF and select Open with → Zoho PDF Editor.

Make changes

• Use the text tool to add text boxes as overlays on existing content.
• Select and copy text or use text search to find content in the PDF.
• Use page tools to insert, delete, reorder, rotate, split, merge, or replace pages.
• Add annotations such as highlights, notes, shapes, links, or file attachments for review.
• Insert and edit images as needed.
• Use the freehand drawing tool to draw directly on PDF content.
• Apply watermarks, barcodes, QR codes, and other marks as needed.

Save or export

• Save as PDF, or export as a flattened PDF, TXT, PNG, or JPEG.
• Note: Flattened PDFs merge annotations and form fields into the page, and existing digital signatures become visual only.

Editing PDFs from Terminal (CLI)

You can run common PDF operations from the command line using the Zoho PDF Editor CLI.

Using CLI commands

Install the Zoho PDF Editor CLI globally using:

npm install -g @zohocorporation/zpdf-cli

Alternatively, install the CLI locally in your project using:

npm install @zohocorporation/zpdf-cli

Once installed, verify the installation by running:

zpdf-cli --help

Run CLI commands from your terminal or command prompt using:

zpdf-cli <command> [options]

General syntax

• Use -i to specify the input PDF and -o to specify the output file, unless otherwise specified.
• Specify page ranges using formats such as 1,3,5 or 1-5.
• Specify rotation angles in degrees. Page numbers are 1-based.

You can run commands from any folder containing the PDFs you want to process.

Available CLI commands and syntax