Move, resize and line up text and objects in a PDF

Select anything on the page

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Drop the PDF on the box above. The Select tool (V) is in hand, and every object on the page can be picked:

• Click an object to select it. A frame with 4 corner handles appears, and the Properties panel on the right names what it is: Text, Picture, Shape, or Object for grouped content.
• Drag across empty space to select everything the box touches.
• Shift+click (or Ctrl+click) adds an object to the selection or takes it out.
• Ctrl+A selects every object on the page in view.

The name in the panel tells you what you are holding. Text and pictures are single objects. Object means grouped content: a logo built from many shapes, a chart, or anything the authoring program packed into one unit. It moves and resizes as one.

Move it precisely

To	Do this
Move	Drag the object, or drag inside the frame of a selection
Snap	Just drag: edges and centres catch on the page’s edges and centre and on other objects, and a guide line shows
Move freely	Hold Alt while dragging
Nudge by 1 point	An arrow key
Nudge by 10 points	Shift and an arrow key
See the position	Read Position (x and y) in the Properties panel
Duplicate	Ctrl+D, or Duplicate in the panel
Delete	Delete or Backspace
Undo	Ctrl+Z; redo with Ctrl+Y

A point is 1/72 of an inch, about 0.35 mm, so 10 points is about 3.5 mm. On a phone, tap to select and drag the frame; two fingers zoom.

Line up several objects

Select 2 or more objects and the panel shows Line up: left edges, centres, right edges, tops, middles or bottoms, each as one step. With 3 or more, Spread evenly across and Spread evenly down set equal gaps between them, keeping the outer 2 where they are. It is the quick way to straighten a column of amounts or a row of logos that drifted.

Resize text and pictures

Drag a corner handle. What happens depends on the object:

• Text scales with its proportions kept, in its own font. We dragged an Arial line on a test invoice to 1.5 times its size: it went from 184 to 276 points wide, stayed in the file’s Arial, and stayed searchable. It does not rewrap: a PDF line is a line, and resizing makes the letters bigger, not the box wider.
• Pictures scale with their proportions kept.
• Shapes and drawings stretch freely in either direction.

To give text a set point size rather than a dragged one, use Size in the Properties panel; that rewrites the line in a standard font, as changing the font explains.

When a line comes apart, or things move together

Two surprises, both from how the PDF was made:

• A line in pieces. Some programs write one line as several text objects, and Chrome’s print to PDF sometimes writes one per letter. Click and you hold only a piece. Start a drag in the empty space beside the line and pull it across the whole line instead: everything the box touches is selected, and the line moves as one.
• Grouped content. A logo of 30 shapes, a chart, a decorated heading: the authoring program grouped them, so they select and move as one Object. Splitting a group apart is not supported, the text inside it cannot be retyped, and a group cannot be copied (text, shapes and pictures can). Moving and resizing the whole group works.

Moving does not reflow the page

A PDF page is a fixed canvas, not a Word document. Move a paragraph up and the space it left stays empty; delete a line and nothing below it moves up. Moving something into a filled spot overlaps what is there, because nothing pushes aside. So make room first: move or delete what is in the way, then move the object in. For a rearrangement that touches most of a page, the source document, or PDF to Word for flowing text, is less work.

The honest limits

• No layer order: there is no bring to front or send to back.
• No lock against accidental drags; Ctrl+Z is the safety net.
• Groups stay groups.
• Moving a page’s content does not move its form fields or comments; those are separate from the page content and stay where they are.
• On a scan, the whole page is one picture: moving it moves the page image, not a word on it.