support
help
PDFpen comes with extensive online help, which you can access from the Help menu in the program. You can also view the latest Help online or download a PDF version. We frequently update the Help based on your feedback.
faq
Read the Frequently Asked Questions below. Your question might already be answered.
can't find your answer?
If you can't find the answer you need in the Help or the FAQs, send an email to PDFpen Support. SmileOnMyMac's responsive support team will answer your email as quickly as possible!
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I install PDFpen?
See the installation instructions here.
How do I buy PDFpen?
Buy PDFpen now from our web store. To buy from within the product itself, or via fax or phone, click here for instructions.
How does PDFpen compare to Adobe Acrobat?
See this comparison chart of PDF editing features.
What if I don't have Mac OS X 10.4 or later?
For Mac OS X 10.2.5 - 10.3.9, please download PDFpen 2.4.3 or PDFpenPro 2.4.3.
How can I get the Text tool to stay selected when I am filling in forms?
By default, the Text tool will revert to the Select tool after each use. To override this, double-click the Text tool. The Text tool will stay active and you'll be able to fill out the whole form without switching back and forth between tools.
Can PDFpen do actual text editing: replace or change wording, change paragraph spacing, change font type, etc?
PDFpen 3.X features a new option: Correct Text. Select the text you want to modify, click the "Correct Text" icon in the toolbar, and the selected text will be replaced by an editable text block.
PDFpen 2.X will not allow you to edit the existing text on a page. You can, however, overlay a blank region, and then add an editable text block on top of it and enter what you like to obscure what's below.
I started typing some text using the Text tool, but it is too wide. I have resized my text box, but when I try to type in it after resizing, it reverts to its original size. How can I keep the new size?
Select the text box, and choose "Edit->Wrap Text" from the main menu. (Note: If you use the text box tool to drag out a text box, instead of just clicking to create a text box, Wrap Text is the default behavior.)
How do I reduce the size of my PDF file?
Choose Print from the File menu, and choose ColorSync from the third drop-down menu (initially Copies and Pages). Choose Reduce File Size from the Quartz Filter menu and then click Save as PDF. All the images in the file will be compressed. Note also that your PDF file will be flattened and you can no longer edit imprints. You can change the quality of the compression used by adding a new Quartz filter with the quality level you want.
How do I flatten a PDF so that the elements I've added in PDFpen are not editable?
Choose Print from the File menu, and then click Save as PDF. The resulting file will not be editable in most PDF viewers. It will still be editable in PDFpen 3.x, because this version of PDFpen allows you to edit any images in a PDF file, including ones that have been added by PDFpen.
I launched PDFPen, but nothing happened. What's wrong?
Normally nothing happens when PDFpen opens except that the menu bar changes. Odds are the PDFpen icon is in the Dock. If you click you'll see that the upper-left text in the menu bar changes to "PDFpen". To proceed, select: "File >Open..." from the menu. PDFpen needs you to open a PDF file to begin. If you prefer to start from scratch select "File >New Blank Document" and then select "Edit >Insert Blank Page".
Why is there a SmileOnMyMac logo on my PDF when I save it?
Documents saved by the PDFpen demo will be given this watermark. The only way to remove the watermark is to purchase a license to PDFpen (SmileOnMyMac Store) and register the application. When you open a watermarked document with a registered copy of PDFpen, the watermark will be removed automatically and you can simply save again to permanently remove it. Do not save watermarked documents using File->Print->PDF->Save as PDF... or the watermark will remain permanently as though you'd printed to a physical printer.
Why can't I print or modify my document in PDFPen?
Authors of PDF documents may set permissions separate from those in the operating system. These permissions govern the abilities to edit, save and print documents, and PDFpen respects these permissions. To edit you will need to contact the original author of the document and ask for a version without restrictions.
What should I do when one of my PDFs is crashing PDFPen?
The original document may be off-spec, or you may have uncovered a bug. Please try opening the original in PDFpen then do File->Print->PDF->Save as PDF... Open the newly-saved document and perform your edits. If that works, please consider sending us the original document so that we can analyze why and hopefully make PDFpen handle that more gracefully in a future release.
Why are my pages not rendering in order?
PDFpen draws thumbnail images of document pages in the background, and the most recently requested sequence of images (eg. where I've just scrolled to) is drawn first. If you have two processors you'll find that pages are frequently rendered out of order as PDFpen utilizes both of them to generate the thumbnails.
I have dual processors. How do I stop PDFpen exiting when drawing multi-page document views?
On certain documents viewed on a dual-processor machine PDFpen can exit while rendering a multi-page document view. This is due to a synchronization problem deep in system drawing software. You can work around it by utilizing only a single processor to draw thumbnail images. From the Terminal application enter the following statement to resolve this problem: defaults write com.smileonmymac.PDFpen parallelDrawing false
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