Haven’t installed it yet? Start with the Windows install guide or the Mac install guide. This guide assumes PDFGear is already open on your screen.
What everything on the screen means
The first time you open PDFGear it shows a welcome page with a few big buttons. Once you’ve actually opened a PDF, the screen settles into a three-part layout:
- Top toolbar — the most-used actions live here: Open, Save, Print, and the big editing buttons.
- Left sidebar — shows a thumbnail of every page in your PDF. Click a thumbnail to jump to that page. You can also drag thumbnails to reorder pages.
- Main area — the PDF itself. Click anywhere to select text, pictures, or form fields.
Along the very top are tabs that switch between modes — Edit, Fill & Sign, Convert, and so on. Each tab just rearranges the top toolbar to show the buttons relevant to that task. If you ever feel lost, click the Home tab and you’re back to basics.
Three tasks to practice
Do these in order, on a PDF you don’t mind experimenting with. You can always click File → Close Without Saving to throw your changes away, so there’s no risk.
Task 1: Merge two PDFs into one
Click the Tools or Merge button
On the welcome screen, click Merge PDFs. Or if you already have a PDF open, click the Tools tab at the top and then Merge.
Add both files
A window opens with an area that says Drag files here, or click to choose. Click it, then find and pick the first PDF. Repeat for the second PDF (or hold Ctrl on Windows / ⌘ on Mac to select both at once).
Drag them into the right order
Drag the file names up or down to set the order. The top one becomes the front of the combined PDF, the bottom becomes the back.
Click "Merge" and pick a name for the new file
A save dialog appears. Give the new file a clear name like combined-statement.pdf and save it somewhere easy to find (Desktop is fine). Click Save. Done.
Task 2: Shrink a big PDF for email
Most email accounts reject attachments over 25 MB. Scanned documents and PDFs with photos often sneak over that limit. PDFGear can shrink them in seconds.
Open the oversized PDF
File → Open, then pick the PDF.
Click Tools → Compress PDF
A window appears with three quality choices: Low, Medium, High.
Start with "Medium"
Medium usually cuts file size by 50-70% without making the PDF look bad. If the first try is still too big for email, try Low next.
Save the compressed copy
Save it with a slightly different name, like the original plus -smaller, so you keep the original full-quality version too.
Task 3: Fill out a form and sign it
Open the form PDF and click the Fill & Sign tab
At the top, click the tab labeled Fill & Sign. The toolbar switches to show just the form-related buttons.
Click inside each blank line and type
If the form is properly made, the blank lines behave like boxes — click one and your typing cursor appears. Press Tab to jump to the next field.
If a line doesn’t let you click into it, click the Add Text button in the toolbar and then click where you want the text to appear. A little text box shows up with a cursor — type away.
Check checkboxes
Click the little Checkmark or ✗ button in the toolbar, then click the checkbox on the form. You can move or resize the mark after placing it.
Draw your signature
Click the Sign button. A box pops up letting you draw, type, or upload a signature.
- Draw is the most natural. Use your mouse, trackpad, or (on a touchscreen) your finger.
- Type lets you pick a handwriting-style font and type your name.
Click Apply, then click where on the form you want the signature to appear. Drag it around to line up with the signature line if needed.
File → Save As, then give it a clear name
Name it something like lease-filled-signed.pdf and save it next to the original (not over it — always keep a blank copy).
Good habits from here
- Back up the original before editing. Always save your edited file under a new name. PDFGear doesn’t nag you about this, and it’s easy to overwrite the blank copy by accident.
- Use the side panel for long documents. The thumbnail sidebar makes jumping around a 50-page bank statement much faster than scrolling.
- If you get stuck, check the official manual. PDFGear keeps a detailed guide at pdfgear.com/windows-user-guide. It’s written for Windows but most of it applies to Mac too.
What’s next
- Need to print what you just edited? See our Windows print guide or Mac print guide.
- Ready to email it? Our email a PDF guide walks through that step by step.
- Curious about the website alternative? Read up on BentoPDF, a free in-browser tool that handles many of the same jobs without anything to install.