What's new

Fixes a crash on some Windows 10 PCs, and conversions keep tables closer to the original.

• Fixes a crash at start-up on some Windows 10 PCs.
• PDF to Word keeps a statement's labels on the left and each amount in its own column.
• PDF to Excel keeps negative amounts and years as numbers, and wrapped cells show every line.
• PDF to PowerPoint keeps table text readable, and text boxes stay on the slide.
• Export to Images saves every page by default, and double-clicking a word in Edit Text selects it.

Simpler screens and plainer wording, with more reliable filling, signing, links, redaction and page tools.

• Crop pages by dragging a box on the page, and bookmarks you add go straight into the document — select text and press Ctrl+B to add one.
• A signature dropped on a signature box fits inside it, a new signature is kept for next time, and the Date tool fills printed date boxes.
• Links are added the moment you draw them, and one Undo removes them.
• Find & Redact finds numbers at the end of a sentence and marks a whole phrase as one box, and password-protected copies open in other PDF apps.
• Sideways phone scans turn upright when their text is recognized, and rotating pages no longer stalls.
• Recent files are in the ⋯ menu, selected text has a Copy button, and Split and Compress can show you the folder they saved to.

Smoother everyday work: the hand tool does more, conversions open beside the page, and forms and signing behave as expected.

• The hand tool in View does more: drag to scroll or select text, fill in forms directly, and click a comment to select it, find it in the list and move it.
• PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Images, and Compress, open in a panel beside the page that shows only the format you picked.
• PDF to Word keeps real page margins, borderless statements, bullets and page numbers closer to the original.
• Forms: empty checkboxes stay empty, amounts keep the form's own format, and Fill from your details now works on forms without fillable boxes.
• Certificate signatures appear on the page where you click. Stamps are see-through, and page thumbnails show every mark.
• Drag tabs to reorder them. Single-key shortcuts are now off by default, so typing right after placing a text box no longer switches tools.

A newer PDF engine, text recognition in more languages, and more accurate PDF to Word.

• An updated PDF engine shows pages, fonts and forms more faithfully.
• Recognize text reads Arabic, Hindi and Korean scans and reads Chinese and Japanese more accurately; sideways scanned pages are turned upright first.
• PDF to Word keeps thin-bordered tables as real tables, keeps margin notes beside the page and lays rotated pages out upright; PDF to PowerPoint writes real slide titles.
• Compress makes black-and-white scans much smaller without losing quality.
• No Microsoft Office? If the free LibreOffice is installed, PDF Coast uses it to turn Word, Excel and PowerPoint files into PDFs.
• View starts with the hand tool: drag the page to scroll, or drag across words to select them. Opening another PDF brings PDF Coast to the front, and the Print window stays on screen.

Better Word, PowerPoint and Excel conversion, forms that keep their layout, and a steadier app.

• PDF to Word places text, shading and lines where they are on the page, and government forms such as tax returns keep their boxes and layout.
• PDF to PowerPoint turns panels, shapes and photos into real slide shapes; PDF to Excel turns amounts into real numbers.
• Edit Text works in more documents, including coloured text, sideways text, Vietnamese, and more Chinese and Japanese fonts.
• Scanned PDFs open the Recognize text panel by themselves, ready in one click.
• Stamps can move to another page, fillable forms keep working after you reorder, extract or split pages, and Compress keeps your comments.
• Open several PDFs from File Explorer at once, each in its own tab; protected PDFs print, and large or unusual files open and save more reliably.

Smoother reading, more precise selection, and much smaller compressed files.

• Documents that mix portrait and landscape pages scroll without jumping, the mouse wheel turns pages in single-page view, and zooming keeps the spot under the pointer in place.
• Selecting text takes exactly the lines you drag over, and copied text keeps its spaces and line breaks.
• Compress keeps only the characters the document uses in its fonts and shrinks JPEG 2000 photos too, so many files come out far smaller.
• OCR reads values inside boxed fields, such as an invoice number and date.
• Excel keeps period headings over their amounts, and exports show where the file was saved.
• Printing works for PDFs another app has updated, and tool tips appear briefly above the page instead of in a bar at the bottom.

Editing text in English documents now saves exactly what you see, and Word conversion lets you choose how the document is laid out.

• Edit Text: in English documents, the lines you see while you type are the lines that are saved. A paragraph that grows pushes the text below it down, and underlines move with their words.
• Edit Text: when a change is drawn as a replacement, the old wording underneath is removed from the file, so search and copy find only the new wording — on scanned pages too.
• Edit Text works in more documents: headings with joined letters, symbol fonts, outlined text, titles printed over each other, labels in tables, and more Chinese, Japanese and Korean paragraphs.
• Add Text and Fill & Sign: the line breaks on screen match the saved page, typed signatures look more like handwriting, and phone photos are added upright.
• Word: choose Keep page layout, or Editable text where the text moves along as you edit. Quotes and statements convert cleanly.
• Sticky notes type in the right order, and the toolbar shows mode names whenever there is room.

A big upgrade to editing text on the page and to converting PDFs to Word.

• Edit Text: when a paragraph grows, the text below it moves down instead of being covered.
• Edit Text: bulleted and numbered items re-flow as one item, and words drawn with joined letters (such as "office") can be edited.
• Edit Text: dragging a text box wider or narrower re-flows the real text in many more documents, and the saved line breaks match what the editor showed.
• Word: forms keep their answer boxes and labels in place, two-column pages keep their columns, and far fewer documents come out a page longer.
• Word: text colours, bullets and table-of-contents links are kept, simple profit and loss statements and balance sheets become editable tables, and page numbers are no longer printed twice.
• Word and PowerPoint pick a closer-looking font on your PC when the original font is not installed.

Better PDF to Word conversion, especially for fee schedules and tables, and dynamic forms that behave more like the original.

• Fee schedules and price tables keep their amounts in the right columns and become editable Word tables — insert a row or lengthen a note and the rest of the page moves with it.
• Converted Word documents are cleaner: text is no longer cut off or duplicated, list indents and page margins are kept, and complex pages no longer spill onto extra pages.
• Scanned text converts at the right size, and headings and numbered lists keep their levels and numbers.
• Dynamic forms handle conditional sections, linked drop-down lists, date checks and page numbers better, and show logos, character boxes, links and centred text correctly.
• Field highlighting can be switched on or off, a notice you close stays closed, and empty optional fields are no longer marked in red.
• A form's own Print, Save, Clear and Submit buttons now work, and opening a single image converts it straight to a PDF.

Forms that build their own pages now open as real forms, and Edit Text opens in the page's own type.

• Dynamic forms — used by many government and bank PDFs — open as the form, and can be filled in, saved and reopened with your answers.
• The form's own calculations, show-and-hide sections and add-row buttons work, and entries are checked as you type.
• Your answers come back if the app closes unexpectedly, and such forms can be converted into an ordinary PDF.
• Edit Text opens with the page's own fonts, sizes, colours, underlines and line breaks, and links move with their text.
• In Fill & Sign, one drag selects a run of boxes, and wrapped text no longer loses its last line.

Smoother text editing, lists that keep their shape, and form filling that looks like the form.

• Editing text no longer makes the page flash.
• Bulleted and numbered lists keep their shape, and markers no longer leave a faint copy behind.
• Dragging a text box moves everything inside it, and word spacing matches the page.
• In Fill & Sign, text lands in the printed boxes as you type, and text you place can be moved and widened.
• Checkboxes printed for an X get an X, and marks you have placed can be selected and deleted.
• Clearer messages when Arabic or Hindi text cannot be edited.

Editing text looks like the finished page while you type, and Find & Replace shows every change before making it.

• One click selects the whole block of text; lines break where the page breaks them, in the document's own font, with the background kept.
• Find & Replace previews every match before changing anything.
• Clicking a form field types straight into it, and long forms open faster.
• You can review and remove a document's hidden data before sending it.
• More options for headers, footers and page numbers, and PDF to Word keeps numbered lists.
• The Cover tool is now called Whiteout.

Edit Text saves real text on almost every page, and PDF to Word creates real tables and lists.

• Edit Text works on two-column pages, on outlined, spot-colour and slanted text, and in password-protected documents.
• Find & Replace keeps the text colour and re-flows the paragraph instead of covering it.
• PDF to Word turns ruled grids into Word tables and numbered lists into Word lists, and three long-standing conversion errors are fixed.
• Redaction shows which pages keep selectable text before saving, and Bates numbering across several files shows its plan first.
• Add Text matches the text beside it, and the eraser can remove part of a highlight.

Edit Text was rebuilt, and watermarks, backgrounds and links became more flexible.

• Click a paragraph to edit it in place in the page's own colour and weight; drag the sides to re-flow it, and lists keep their bullets.
• New Page Background, and a watermark can now be a picture, at any angle.
• Watermarks, headers and footers, page numbers and backgrounds added by PDF Coast can be edited later.
• Existing links can be edited or removed, and pictures paste straight in with Ctrl+V.
• Redaction keeps selectable text on far more pages, and search results can be exported as a PDF report.

Easier navigation and reading, splitting by file size, and better Chinese conversions.

• Alt+Left and Alt+Right step back and forward through your jumps, and Find also searches comments.
• Warm and night page colours, two-page spreads, page labels and layer switches.
• Split a PDF into parts that each fit a size limit.
• More faithful PDF to Word for Chinese documents, and wide tables split into proper columns in Excel.
• A warning before converting a PDF whose text is garbled, with text recognition offered.
• Improved image cropping, Batch Replace, Add Text and Chinese stamps.

Faster startup and more faithful conversions.

• The app starts noticeably faster.
• PDF to Word keeps complex layouts on their original pages.
• Scanned PDFs converted to PowerPoint keep much more editable text, and faint Chinese copies are recognised better.
• The About window's feature list is available in Chinese.
• Better keyboard navigation and text contrast.

PDF Coast now speaks Chinese.

• The whole interface is available in Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
• A new, much more accurate engine for recognising Chinese scans.
• Text on the page renders with proper weight, without darkening scans.
• Prepare Form finds the fillable fields for you in one click.
• Fixes for Word export under page banners, the All Tools drawer, and shortcuts while filling forms.

Stamps work from every place you can pick them.

• Fixed Sign Here and other stamps sometimes not being placed after you picked them.
• The stamp list now shows signing stamps first.

A free 14-day trial of every Pro tool.

• Try every Pro tool free for 14 days — no account, no payment method, and nothing to cancel.
• Saving pages as pictures is now free; Batch Convert is now a Pro tool and works on any files you pick.
• Convert & Export lists each format directly, and View has its own tools panel.

PDF to Word, Excel and PowerPoint rebuilt from the ground up.

• Converted files keep the page count of the original, with pictures, headers and footers where they belong.
• PDF to Word produces one editable document, and ordinary text is no longer mistaken for a table.
• Oversized scanned pages no longer produce a Word file that will not open.
• PDFs whose text layer cannot be read are detected, and text recognition is offered.
• Fixed a tall blue selection bar on some PDFs, and a false signature warning on some government forms.

Filling in forms got much easier, and the app does exactly what a document's author allows.

• Clicks reach the form field, ticked boxes are saved, and your own entries are easy to change.
• Font, size and colour can be changed while typing, and the toolbar fits narrow windows.
• Page tools work on a protected document when its author allows them, and only then.
• Find & Redact names any page it could not check, and flattening reports exactly what it did.
• Stamps and signatures are placed finished, and every object has eight resize handles.
• Comments keep their type, content and author through save, export and import.

Eleven tools became free for good, the home screen was rebuilt, and reordering pages was redone.

• Now free: merge, split and compress, converting files to PDF, watermarks, page numbers, Bates numbering, headers and footers, and text export.
• A new home screen with real previews of your recent files.
• Watermarks, page numbers, headers and footers, crop and flatten can apply to the open document.
• Dragging pages into a new order was rebuilt, and shows where each page will land.
• Scanning with a document feeder or a BMP-only scanner works, compression is far more effective, and protected PDFs export without unlocking.
• A redesigned editor, measurement tools, certificate signing and sharper page previews.

New reading and reviewing tools, nearly all of them free.

• A magnifier, read aloud, two pages side by side, and zoom up to 1600%.
• Highlights snap to words, comments can be marked Accepted or Rejected, and you can print without markup.
• Search every PDF in a folder, split by bookmarks, and print one page as a poster across several sheets.
• More accurate text recognition, and better Word, Excel and PowerPoint export.

Text editing reaches more of the world's scripts.

• Edit Arabic, Hebrew and Indic text a line at a time.
• Find & Replace changes the document's own text instead of covering it.

A quality pass across the whole app.

• Fixed Add Link, editing on two-column pages, and several tools that seemed to do nothing.
• More tools can be found from the command palette (Ctrl+K), with Pro tools marked.

The first release on the Microsoft Store, with PDF Coast Pro.

• Free to use: viewing, search, printing, comments, Fill & Sign and page organising.
• PDF Coast Pro unlocks editing, text recognition, redaction, conversion and more with one purchase — no subscription, no account.