A finalised PDF has the wrong company name in a footer. The source file is gone. The deadline is now.
Text replacement on a finished PDF is possible — the trick is the document type.
For live-text PDFs
Open the PDF in Flint's editor. Click the text you want to replace. Type the new text. Save.
Works for one-off changes. For bulk find-and-replace (e.g. "Acme Corp" → "Acme Inc" everywhere), use the find-and-replace tool.
For scanned PDFs
Scanned PDFs need OCR before text can be replaced. Run OCR first.
After OCR, the recognised text is editable. Edit the misread or outdated text. Note that the visible scan still shows the old text — only the underlying text layer is updated. For true visual replacement, see the next section.
For visible replacement on scans
If you need the displayed text to actually change (not just the underlying layer), you need to redact the old text and add a text box with the new content.
Less clean than editing live text, but it's the only way to visually update scanned content.
FAQ
Why can't I edit text in some PDFs?
Either it's a scan (run OCR first) or it has edit restrictions (need owner password to remove).
Will replaced text match the surrounding font?
The editor tries to. Sometimes minor differences appear — usually invisible to readers.
Can I bulk replace across many PDFs?
For batch processing, command-line tools work better. Web editors do one PDF at a time.
Does replacement affect form fields?
Form field values are separate from page text. Replacing page text doesn't affect form field defaults.
Text replacement is fast when the PDF is live-text and slower when it's scanned. Open yours in Flint's editor and fix what needs fixing.