Edit a PDF: troubleshooting common problems

Quick fixes for the problems people hit most often in Edit. Everything below happens in your browser — your PDF is never uploaded, so none of these issues involve a server.

"This PDF is password-protected"

Edit checks the file before opening it. If it's encrypted with an open password, it refuses with this message rather than failing later.

Cause: the PDF requires a password to open, and Edit can't work on encrypted bytes.

Fix:

1. Click the Remove the password first link in the message (it goes to Unlock).
2. Enter the password there and download the unlocked copy — this also happens entirely in your browser.
3. Open the unlocked copy in Edit.

If you don't know the password, AttachKit can't bypass it. Re-export the file without a password from wherever it came from (Preview, Acrobat, the issuing site).

"No selectable text on this PDF" in Replace text

Cause: the document is a scan or image-only export — it has pictures of text, but no text layer to click.

Fix:

1. Stay in Replace text. Recognition normally starts automatically ("Recognising image text… %"); if it didn't, click Recognise text (OCR).
2. Check the Scan language picker matches the document — 24 languages are available, and the default is English. The choice is remembered and shared with the Redact tool.
3. If you change the language, click Re-recognise to run recognition again.

OCR runs on your device, like everything else here — the scan is not sent anywhere.

"Couldn't recognise any text on this PDF"

Cause: OCR ran but found nothing usable — usually a very low-quality scan, heavy skew, or the wrong scan language.

Fix:

1. Set the correct Scan language and click Try recognising again.
2. If it still fails, the scan may simply be too poor to read. You can still place new Text, boxes and highlights anywhere with the other tools — they don't need a text layer.

Text inside a picture or figure isn't clickable

Cause: on a normal text page, words that are part of an embedded image (a screenshot, a chart, a photographed form) aren't in the text layer, and Edit deliberately avoids covering photos with noisy guesses.

Fix: in Replace text, click the Recognise it (OCR) link in the help row. That recognises the whole document and adds clickable chips for image text it can read, keeping the existing ones.

"This PDF has too many image pages to recognise at once"

Cause: OCR is capped at 200 image pages per document to keep your browser responsive.

Fix:

1. Split the document into smaller parts with Pages.
2. Edit each part, then merge them back together in Pages.

Alternatively, add text and boxes with the other tools — only Replace text needs OCR.

Replaced text can still be found by search

Cause: this is by design, and the tool says so while you work. Replace text is a visual edit: the original is covered with a patch and your new text is drawn on top, but the old characters remain in the file's hidden text layer.

Fix: if the original text must be unrecoverable — names, account numbers, anything sensitive — run the file through Redact, which removes the underlying text rather than covering it.

"Applying…" takes very long, or stops with "This is taking longer than expected"

Cause: Apply & download rebuilds the PDF in your browser. Very large files, many edits, or big placed images can push it past the 60-second safety limit, at which point Edit stops waiting so you don't lose the page.

Fix:

1. Click Cancel if it's still running and you want your edits back on screen.
2. Apply fewer edits at a time: download an intermediate copy, reopen it, and continue.
3. If you placed large photos, resize them smaller before exporting, or compress the source PDF first with Compress.

"Couldn't apply your edits" or "This file isn't a valid PDF"

Cause: the file is truncated, corrupted, or not actually a PDF (a renamed file, a half-finished download).

Fix: re-download or re-export the file from its original source and try again. If it consistently fails on a file that opens fine elsewhere, report it — that's a bug we want to see.

"That image couldn't be read"

Cause: the Image tool accepts PNG and JPEG only.

Fix: convert the image to PNG or JPEG (any image editor or screenshot tool can do this) and pick it again.

My edits disappeared

Cause: edits live only in the open tab until you download. Open another PDF and Edit another PDF warn you first — "Your current edits on this PDF haven't been downloaded — they'll be discarded" — and choosing Discard & continue is final; undo can't bring edits back across a discard or a reload.

Fix: click Apply & download before switching files. The download is the save: AttachKit keeps no copy of your document, so the downloaded file is the only place your edits exist.

Still stuck?

If none of this matches what you're seeing, contact support and describe the file (page count, scanned or not, roughly how big) — never send anything confidential you haven't redacted.