Change the font, size or colour of text in a PDF

Restyle a line, step by step

Edit PDFReal text editing, objects, annotations, forms. Free, runs on your device.Open

1. Drop the PDF on the box above and click the line you want to change. A frame with 4 corner handles marks it.
2. In the Properties panel, under Selected · Text, choose what to change:
   • Change font: Sans (Arial, Helvetica), Serif (Times) or Mono (Courier).
   • Style: B for bold, I for italic.
   • Size: from 8 to 72 pt, as the reader sees it on the page.
   • Colour: 8 swatches, or Any colour for the full picker.
3. The page shows the change at once. It is one step in the Changes list and undoes with Ctrl+Z.
4. Click Save for a new copy, name-edited.pdf.

On a phone, tap the line and then Style in the bar that appears; the same controls open in a sheet.

The panel also shows what the line is now: Font gives its name as the file stores it, and Embedded says whether the file carries that font.

What a restyle does to the font

This is the part to know before you click. A restyle does not adjust the existing text; it replaces the line with a new one in the chosen style:

• Text in English and most Western European languages is set in Helvetica, Times or Courier, with bold and italic variants. These are the standard PDF fonts every viewer has, so nothing is embedded.
• Text with letters outside them (ł, ř, Č, Greek, Cyrillic) is set in the matching Liberation font, embedded in the file, which adds about 230 KB once per font.

That holds for every control, even a colour change: the line leaves its original typeface. On our test invoice, printed to PDF from Chrome:

The change	The original line	After
Colour to red	Arial, 184.0 pt wide	Helvetica, 184.0 pt wide: looks the same, in red
Colour to red	Verdana, 142.1 pt wide	Helvetica, 123.4 pt wide: 13 % narrower
Bold	Arial, 184.0 pt wide	Helvetica Bold, 196.5 pt wide: 7 % wider
Bigger size	Arial, 184.0 pt wide	Helvetica, 230.0 pt wide at a size 25 % larger
Any change on a Cyrillic line	Arial, 71.1 pt wide	Liberation Sans, 71.7 pt wide

Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New survive this almost unchanged, because Helvetica, Times and Courier have the same letter widths. A distinctive typeface, a brand font, Verdana or Calibri, does not: the line takes on the generic look. Why the font changes when you edit a PDF explains the families and their widths.

Bigger or smaller, and keep the original font

The Size list rewrites the line, as above. To scale a line in its own font instead, select it and drag one of the 4 corner handles: the text grows or shrinks with its proportions kept, and the font stays exactly as it was. We dragged our Arial line to 1.5 times its size: it stayed in the file’s Arial, went from 184 to 276 points wide, and remained searchable after saving. Snapping guides appear as you drag; hold Alt to drag freely.

The Size list shows the size a reader sees on the page: the font size the file writes times any scaling it applies to the text. Chrome’s print to PDF, for example, writes 12 pt text as 16 pt scaled by 0.75; the list shows 12 pt, and picking 14 pt makes the line 14 pt on the page. A size between the usual steps, such as 13 pt, is added to the list so the line’s own size shows; sizes are rounded to whole points.

Size changes and the layout

A PDF page is a fixed canvas. Making a line bigger makes it longer and taller, and it does not wrap or push anything aside:

• A line that grows runs further right, and can run into the next column or off the page.
• A taller line can touch the line above or below; lines do not move apart.
• A smaller line leaves a gap at its end.

The editor has no overflow warning, so look after each change. The fixes are plain: pick a smaller size, shorten the text (double-click it and retype), or move the line or its neighbours with the Select tool. Moving text covers the nudges and snapping.

Bold and italic

Bold and italic use the variants of the same families: Helvetica Bold or Oblique, Times Bold or Italic, Courier Bold or Oblique, and Liberation Bold and Italic for other letters. Bold text is wider than regular (7 % on our Arial line), so a bolded line gets longer. The editor picks the family from the font’s name: a name with Times or Georgia in it becomes serif, Courier becomes mono, most others sans. If it picks wrong, choose the family yourself in Change font.

Colour, on screen and on paper

A colour change prints as it shows. The catch is printing in black and white: a grey laser printer turns colours into greys by their brightness, and different colours can land on nearly the same grey. The editor’s red and blue swatches become greys of 38 % and 32 % brightness, close enough that “red for overdue, blue for paid” disappears on paper.

To check before printing, run the saved file through Grayscale PDF and look at the result. If 2 colours read alike, make one darker or add a word (“overdue”) instead of relying on colour. Printing a PDF right covers the rest of the print checks.

The honest limits

• 3 families, not your fonts. Sans, serif and mono are what the editor can write. The file’s own typeface is kept only for retyping text with letters it already has, and for moving and scaling.
• One line at a time. No paragraph styles, no restyling a selection of many lines in one go.
• No reflow. Bigger text does not wrap; you rearrange by hand.
• Grouped content stays as it is. Text inside a logo or a chart selects as part of the group and cannot be restyled.
• Not for Arabic, Hebrew or Chinese lines. The bundled fonts cannot write those scripts, and the editor refuses to type them. A restyle of a line already in one of them is refused the same way, with a message naming the script, and the line stays as it was. Editing in another language has the details.

When the change is about the whole document, such as a new house font or a different size for all body text, the source file is the better place: edit it in Word or the original app and export the PDF again.