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Editing of a PDF-searchable note within the body of the note is NOT editable.


Lewis Cullen

Idea

I was - after three tries - able to find there is no way to edit or add to the core content of a saved PDF note without spending many dollars for a separate application.  

 

One can add/delete tags, edit the Title, but CANNOT directly change anything in the body of the note.  

 

This means you should not store any scanned document in Evernote which changes; such as lists of your prescriptions, phone numbers, etc., etc.

 

There are workarounds, but I just spent an hour "working around" getting a 4 page note back into my Document File so I could add/change items.

 

Evernote is a very good storage for searchable data; it scores zero in my book for editing.

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There are free PDF tools out there you can get to edit PDFs.  Though I think most of the time folks annotate PDFs and do most of the editing on the source document.  PDF is primarily an image format.  Do you have the base document?

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I was going paperless, so I scanned my documents to Evernote and shredded them.  No. I do not have the originals.  I will try to find some "free" PDF editors - so far, they are free to try, leave a papermark, or do not work, or all of the above.    I even tried a $99 one on a trial basis, but it had no documentation, and could not get it to open the pdf note.  I have spent all of the time (two days) on this hopeless project I intend to spend.

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Sorry you are having issues.  I am paperless myself, 17k PDFs so far, and in my use case I really don't have that many opportunities when I want to edit the PDF.  What is triggering that for you?

 

It if is things like phone lists and prescriptions, you can copy/paste or just create those in an EN note.  Then you simply edit the note when changes occur.  

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@Lewis Cullen:  The PDF format, by design, is mostly a read-only format with regards to content.  It is intended to preserve the content of the PDF (both text and images).  However, many PDF tools will allow you to add annotations (comments and drawings) on top of the actual content.

 

So, most PDF tools do not support the actual editing of the PDF content (there are some exceptions).

Usually, one does NOT create a PDF of information that you wish to make more changes.

Changes are usually made to the source document.

 

If you want to maintain lists of things, then you would want to enter the lists directly into Evernote as text, or use a file like MS Word that is designed to be easily changed.

If your only source of the list is a paper document, then you have a couple of options to create an editable list:

  1. Type the list directly into Evernote
  2. Scan the document, OCR it (outside of Evernote), and then export the OCR'd text, and then copy/paste or import into Evernote.

Unless it is a long list, it is fastest, IMO, to just type the list into Evernote.

 

So, do you really want to edit the content of the PDF, or just add annotations?

 

I was - after three tries - able to find there is no way to edit or add to the core content of a saved PDF note without spending many dollars for a separate application.  

 

One can add/delete tags, edit the Title, but CANNOT directly change anything in the body of the note.  

 

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Thanks for the help.  I copy and paste into a Pages form, but it requires editing, as the spacing is wrong.  

 

I am not familiar with an EN note, and a search in Evernote help finds nothing.  Are you speaking of Endnote?

Evernote is comprised of Notebooks and Notes.  If you are putting PDFs into Evernote they are stored in Notes.  So what I meant by EN note is just a Note in Evernote in which you copy/paste text or in which you type text.  Also, other document types can be added to Evernote just like PDF's.  They are searchable with a Premium account and can be modified using the native application, Word for .docx documents for example.

 

And you are correct, the formatting options within Evernote text are limited.  

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