User Guide & Help Centre – PDF Pro Panel 3

1. Installing PDF Pro Panel 3

Pick your platform below. The desktop editions do all their work on your own computer — no account or internet connection is needed to process a document.

🪟 Windows 10 & 11 (64-bit)

Download PDF Pro Panel 3 Setup from the download page. There are two builds: the Installer (adds a Start Menu entry and file associations) and the Portable build (a single .exe that runs from anywhere, including a USB stick, and installs nothing).
Run the downloaded file. Windows may show a blue "Windows protected your PC" SmartScreen notice. This appears because the current build is not yet code-signed — it is not a virus warning. Click More info → Run anyway to continue.
Follow the installer. You can change the install folder, and choose whether to install for just you or all users.
Launch it from the Start Menu. The 14-day full-featured trial starts on first launch — no card required.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, roughly 600 MB free disk space, 4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended for OCR on long documents).

🍎 macOS

Download the .dmg and open it.
Drag PDF Pro Panel 3 into your Applications folder.
The first time you open it, macOS Gatekeeper may refuse because the build is not yet notarised. Right-click (or Control-click) the app icon and choose Open, then confirm. You only need to do this once.

Requirements: macOS 11 Big Sur or newer, Apple Silicon or Intel.

🤖 Android

Install from Google Play, or side-load the APK from your account's download page.
If you side-load, Android will ask you to allow installs from your browser or file manager — this is a one-time permission in Settings → Apps → Special access.
Open the app and tap Settings ⚙️ → Activate Pro License if you have a key.

Requirements: Android 8.0 or newer.

📱 iOS & iPadOS

Install from the App Store.
Open the app, then tap Settings ⚙️ → Activate Pro License and paste your key.

Requirements: iOS / iPadOS 15 or newer.

🌐 Web (nothing to install)

Go to app.pdfpropanel.com and sign in. Browser-sandbox tools run entirely inside your browser tab; cloud conversion endpoints are available on the Pro Web plans and purge uploaded files automatically within 24 hours.

2. Your first document, in about a minute

There are four ways to open a PDF in the desktop app. Use whichever suits you:

Drag and drop a PDF anywhere onto the window.
Click Open PDF in the workspace bar at the top of the dashboard.
Double-click a .pdf file in Windows Explorer or Finder, once the app is installed.
Pick it from Recent Documents or a Bookmarked Folder on the dashboard.

Then choose what you want to do:

Pick a tool. The dashboard groups every tool into Open & Edit, Organize & Optimize, Convert, Extract & Recognize, Protect & Privacy, and Enterprise & Workspace. You can also press Ctrl+K (⌘K on Mac) at any time and type a tool name.
Already reading a document? You do not need to close it. Use the 🧰 Tools menu in the viewer's toolbar and the open document is used automatically as the input.
Save the result. Every tool ends with a save dialog, and finished files also appear under Processed History.

Nothing is uploaded at any point on the desktop editions. Processing happens in your computer's own memory.

3. What each tool does

Open & Edit

PDF Viewer & Reader — multi-page reader with zoom, page navigation, thumbnails and an outline sidebar.
Live PDF Editor & Signer — add text boxes, shapes, sticky notes, freehand ink, stamps, highlights, redaction boxes, checkmarks and signatures directly onto pages.
Mark & Sign / Sign PDF — draw, type or reuse a saved signature and place it on a contract.
Fill & Flatten PDF Forms — fill interactive AcroForm fields (text boxes, checkboxes, dropdowns, radio groups) and optionally flatten them so the values can no longer be edited.

Organize & Optimize

Merge PDFs — combine several documents in the order you choose.
Split PDF — burst into single pages, or extract a page range or interval.
Organize PDF — a visual thumbnail grid to reorder, rotate and delete pages.
Rotate Pages — rotate specific pages or the whole document by 90°, 180° or 270°.
Compress PDF — reduce file size; the extreme level trades more quality for a smaller file.
Repair PDF — rebuild damaged structure so a file that will not open elsewhere can be recovered.

Convert

PDF to Word / PDF to Excel — extract text into an editable .docx, or tables into a spreadsheet.
Office to PDF — convert Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF, ODT and plain text. See the troubleshooting note about LibreOffice below for the best fidelity.
Images to PDF — turn PNG and JPG photos or scans into a standard PDF.

Extract & Recognize

Document OCR — read printed English text out of a scanned page and optionally save a searchable PDF. Runs locally; nothing is sent anywhere.
Barcode / QR Scanner — detect and decode codes on a page.

Protect & Privacy

Password Protect — AES-256 encryption, with per-permission control over printing, copying, editing, annotating and form filling.
Unlock PDF — remove a password you know from a document you are entitled to open.
Redact PDF — permanently remove content. The exported file contains flattened page images, so hidden text, attachments, links and editable form data are gone, not merely covered up. Keep your original separately.
Metadata Inspector & Cleaner — review and strip author, software, GPS and XMP metadata.

Enterprise & Workspace

Bates Stamping & Indexing — sequential legal numbering with custom prefixes.
Processed History — every file the app has produced this session, with quick actions to view, edit, reveal in folder or remove.

4. Inside the viewer and editor

Find text — press Ctrl+F. Every match is highlighted in yellow across the document, and the match you are currently on is highlighted in orange. Use ▲ / ▼ or Enter / Shift+Enter to step through them.
Select and copy — drag across text, or double-click a word. A small Copy / 🔎 OCR bar appears above the selection. Ctrl+C and right-click → Copy both work too.
🔎 OCR Area — drag a box over any region of the page and the app reads the text out of the pixels, then offers Copy or Save as .txt. This is the one that works on scanned pages, where there is no selectable text at all.
🧰 Tools — run any tool against the document you already have open, without closing it.
Edit & Annotate — switches to the editor. Click an annotation to select it: press Delete to remove it, or nudge it with the arrow keys (hold Shift for larger steps). Double-click a placed signature or initial to change it.
Resize the window — drag the grip in the bottom-right corner to whatever size suits your screen, or press ⛶ in the toolbar to fill it (❐ restores). On ⤢ Fit width, the pages re-flow to the new size as you drag.
Zoom — −, + and ⤢ Fit are in the toolbar in both viewing and editing modes, so you can zoom right in while placing a signature or filling a form field.
Your layout is remembered — zoom level, continuous vs single-page scrolling, the sidebar state and the window size all carry over to the next document you open.

5. Keyboard shortcuts

On macOS, use ⌘ wherever Ctrl is listed.

Ctrl + K	Search all tools and actions
Ctrl + O	Open a document
Ctrl + S	Save a copy
Ctrl + F	Find in document
Ctrl + P	Print
Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Y	Undo / redo an edit
Ctrl + + / − / 0	Zoom in, out, or reset to 100%
← / →	Previous / next page
Delete	Remove the selected annotation (editor)
Arrow keys	Nudge the selected annotation; Shift for bigger steps
Esc	Close whatever is open on top — find bar, dialog, selection, then the viewer

6. Recent documents, bookmarked folders and batches

Recent Documents on the dashboard lists the last few files you opened. Click one to reopen it. If a file has been moved or deleted, you will be told rather than left with an empty window.
Bookmarked Folders (in the sidebar) is for the folders you work out of every day. Click Bookmark a Folder…, pick it once, and afterwards you can list its PDFs and open any of them in a single click.
Batch processing — inside a bookmarked folder, use the Batch all N PDFs buttons to run Compress, Rotate, Protect or Unlock across everything in it, writing the results to a folder you choose. Up to 20 files run at a time.
For security, a folder can only be bookmarked by picking it in the real system folder dialog, and the app will only ever read files that sit inside a folder you chose.

7. Trial, licensing and your devices

The desktop app starts a 14-day fully featured trial on first launch. No card, no account.
When the trial ends the app reverts to the Free Basic tier until you enter a licence key. Your files and settings are untouched.
To activate: click 🔑 Enter License Key in the sidebar (or the trial badge in the top bar), paste your 16-character key, and choose Activate Pro.
Desktop Pro Lifetime covers up to 3 computers, Mobile Pro Lifetime up to 2 devices, and the All-Access Lifetime Bundle up to 5 devices across every platform.
Activated desktop installs keep working offline, with a 30-day offline grace validation window.
Moving to a new computer? Revoke the old one under Connected Devices, then activate the new one.

8. Troubleshooting

Windows says "Windows protected your PC" when I run the installer.
The build is not yet code-signed, so SmartScreen warns about it. Click More info → Run anyway. You can confirm you have the genuine file by comparing its SHA-256 checksum against the one published in our version manifest.

macOS refuses to open the app ("cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified").
Right-click (or Control-click) the app in Applications and choose Open, then confirm. This is only needed the first time.

An update fails with "Update could not be installed".
If you are coming from version 1.4.0 or earlier, that build shipped with a packaging fault that prevented the in-app updater from working at all. Download the latest installer manually once from the download page and install over the top — your licence and settings are preserved. From 1.4.2 onward, in-app updates work normally.

The app says my file is too large.
A single file may be up to 64 MB, a selection up to 128 MB in total, with at most 20 files at a time and 500 pages per document. Split a very large document first, then process the parts.

I cannot select or copy the text in my PDF.
The page is almost certainly a scan — a picture of text, with no text layer to select. Use 🔎 OCR Area in the viewer to read a region, or the Document OCR tool to convert the whole file into a searchable PDF.

OCR returns nothing, or the wrong words.
OCR needs reasonably clean, reasonably straight printed text. Skewed scans, low-resolution images, handwriting, and heavy background patterns all reduce accuracy. Try scanning at 300 DPI or higher. Only English is currently supported. Always proof-read the result before relying on it.

OCR on a long document is taking a long time.
That is expected — recognition runs locally on your CPU, roughly a second or two per page. The progress bar shows a percentage and a time estimate. You can press Cancel; it stops after the page it is currently working on.

Office to PDF loses my formatting.
For the closest match, install LibreOffice (free) or have Microsoft Word installed — the app uses whichever it finds to do the conversion. Without either, it falls back to a simpler built-in converter that preserves text but not complex layout.

A password-protected PDF will not open.
The viewer will prompt you for the password. If you would rather remove it permanently, use the Unlock PDF tool. You will need the password — the app cannot break encryption it has not been given the key for.

"This file has not been authorized."
For your safety the app only reads files you have explicitly chosen, and that permission does not survive the file being moved, replaced or edited by another program. Open the document again through Open PDF, drag and drop, or a bookmarked folder.

A PDF will not open anywhere — it may be corrupt.
Try the Repair PDF tool, which rebuilds damaged internal structure and recovers what it can.

Something crashed, or behaved strangely.
Open ℹ️ About & License → 🩺 Open Diagnostic Logs. That reveals a local log file you can attach to a support email. Logs stay on your computer; nothing is transmitted automatically.

Printing says the document does not allow it.
The PDF's own security settings withhold the print permission — usually because printing was switched off when the file was password-protected. The app honours that rather than quietly overriding it. If the document is yours, remove the restriction with the Unlock PDF tool (or 🧰 Tools → Remove Password inside the viewer) and then print.

Printing a password-protected document does nothing.
Fixed in version 1.5.2. Earlier builds re-read the file from disk when printing and could not get past its password, so nothing reached the printer. Update from ℹ️ About & License → Check for Updates. A document that genuinely forbids printing is a separate case — see the entry above.

I lost work when the app closed.
Unsaved editor work is kept as a recovery draft. Use Recover draft in the workspace bar at the top of the dashboard.

Still stuck? Email support@pdfpropanel.com with your app version (shown in the top bar and under About) and, if relevant, the diagnostic log.

9. Frequently asked questions

Are my documents uploaded anywhere?
No, not on the desktop and mobile apps. Every tool runs on your own device, in its own memory. The only exception is clearly marked: the cloud conversion endpoints on the Pro Web plans at app.pdfpropanel.com, where uploads are encrypted in transit and purged automatically within 24 hours.

Does it work offline?
Yes. The desktop and mobile apps need no connection to open, edit, convert, OCR, protect or sign a document. An activated licence keeps working offline with a 30-day grace window.

Do I need an account?
Not for the desktop trial or for the Free Basic tier. An account is only needed to buy, manage and move licences, and for the Web edition.

How long is the trial, and what happens after?
14 days, fully featured, no card. Afterwards the app drops to the Free Basic tier — it keeps working, with the Pro tools locked until you activate a key.

How many computers can I use one licence on?
Desktop Pro Lifetime covers 3 computers, Mobile Pro Lifetime 2 devices, and the All-Access Lifetime Bundle 5 devices across Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and Web.

Are updates included?
Yes — lifetime licences include ongoing updates. The app checks quietly once a day and tells you when a new version is available; the download always asks first.

Can I get a refund?
Yes. Direct purchases are covered by an unconditional 30-day money-back guarantee — see the Refund Policy.

Is redaction really permanent?
Yes. Redacted output is exported as flattened page images, so the removed text is genuinely gone rather than hidden behind a black box. Because that also removes the text layer, attachments, links and form fields from the exported copy, keep your original separately.

Which languages does OCR support?
English at present. The engine runs locally and ships with the app, so no language data is downloaded at run time.

Can I run it from a USB stick?
Yes — use the Windows Portable build, which installs nothing and leaves no Start Menu entry.

Where are my settings and licence stored?
In your user profile, encrypted at rest — %APPDATA%/PDFProPanel3 on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/PDFProPanel3 on macOS. You can export and restore them from the backup tools in the app.

Is there a macOS / Android / iOS version?
Yes — all four platforms plus the Web edition share one account and, on the All-Access bundle, one licence.