User Guide & Help Centre

Recent desktop features and purchase options

Updated for Windows 1.15.3 and macOS 1.15.2. These desktop features are separate from the browser tools and mobile editions.

Live PDF editing and Word editing

Open a PDF in the viewer and choose Live Editor to open its editable document layout.
Select a word, drag across multiple lines, or use Ctrl+A (Windows) / Cmd+A (Mac) inside the editor to select all text. Apply text colour and formatting to the selection.
Review each page before exporting. The editor preserves the source layout where supported; complex layouts, fonts and scanned pages may need adjustment. Use OCR first for image-only text.

Spreadsheet selection, editing and clipboard

Open an Excel, CSV or TSV file in the Office & Spreadsheet Editor. Click a column letter or row number to select the entire column or row. Select a range or multiple cells, rows or columns before applying formatting or clipboard actions. Right-click the selection for Copy, Paste and other editing actions.

Use merge controls with a selected range, rows or columns to combine cells; check the values before merging. Undo and Redo let you reverse and restore spreadsheet edits. Save a separate copy when changing an imported workbook.

Fillable PDF forms, including XFA

Open Fill & Flatten and choose the PDF. AcroForm fields and supported XFA forms load with interactive fields across their pages.
Click a text field, checkbox, radio button or dropdown to enter values. Navigate through every page and check any calculations or validation messages.
Save an editable copy to retain supported form interactions, or use Flatten for a final copy with the entered values fixed on the pages. Native XFA flattening creates page images, so keep the editable original.

XFA means XML Forms Architecture. Some government forms use it, but compatibility depends on the particular form. Check the saved document and the receiving agency's instructions before submitting. A scanned form has no interactive fields; use the annotation tools to place text instead.

Purchases and trials

Choose your edition: Android purchases go to Google Play and Windows Store purchases go to Microsoft Store. iOS and Mac App Store listings are coming soon. Direct Windows EXE and signed, notarized Mac editions are purchased through secure online checkout, or can be tried for 14 days from first launch without a payment card. Store editions use their own store purchase terms.

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)

Choose your preferred installation method:

Microsoft Store (Recommended): Install directly from the Microsoft Store. Digitally certified, signed by Microsoft, and automatically updated in the background.
Direct Installer (.exe): Download PDF Pro Panel 3 Setup from the download page. Standard setup wizard with Start Menu integration, desktop shortcuts, and file associations.
Portable Edition (.exe): A self-contained executable that runs immediately without installation. Great for USB drives and zero-footprint environments.

Run the installer or portable executable. If Windows shows a "Windows protected your PC" SmartScreen prompt, click More info → Run anyway (or install via the Microsoft Store to skip this).
The 14-day full-featured trial starts automatically on first launch — no credit 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

Available as a direct download:

Direct Universal DMG: Download PDF Pro Panel 3 for Mac (.dmg) from the download page. One universal build runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

Open the .dmg, drag PDF Pro Panel 3 into your Applications folder, then eject the disk image.
Open the app from Applications or Launchpad. It is signed with our Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so the first time macOS simply asks you to confirm opening an app downloaded from the internet — click Open. The 14-day full-featured trial starts on first launch — no card required.

Requirements: macOS 13 Ventura or newer, on an Apple silicon or Intel Mac. Keep the app in Applications rather than running it from the disk image, or in-app updates cannot install.

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 (Cmd+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 — open an editable document layout from the viewer, select and format text across lines, and use annotation and signature tools.
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 and supported XFA forms across pages, then save an editable copy or flatten the values into a final copy.

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 Full Screen in the toolbar to fill it (Exit 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.
Day / Night (Dark/Light) Mode — toggle instantly between Day and Night modes via the sun/moon icon in the topbar or toolbar for comfortable high-contrast viewing and low-light eye comfort.
Smart Dual-Layer Search & Auto-Scroll Find — press Ctrl+F to search across both rendered document text and annotations simultaneously. Matches are highlighted with real-time match counters and smooth auto-scrolling page jumps.
All-Tool Color Picker Suite — live two-way synchronized color swatches for text annotations, highlighters, freehand pens, and shapes that remember your custom palette.
Your layout is remembered — zoom level (with default Fit-to-Width), continuous vs single-page scrolling, the sidebar state, theme, and window size all carry over to the next document you open.

5. Keyboard shortcuts

On macOS, use Cmd 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 remains a free PDF reader: open, read, search and print PDFs. Editing, form filling, conversions and saving processed documents require an active licence. Your existing files and settings remain unchanged. Buy a direct desktop licence online or enter your purchased key.
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.
Direct Desktop Pro Lifetime covers up to 3 computers. Store editions are purchased through their stores; existing licence holders keep their purchased entitlements.
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.
Click More info → Run anyway to proceed. Alternatively, install directly from the Microsoft Store, where PDF Pro Panel 3 is digitally certified and signed by Microsoft. You can also verify any standalone binary against the SHA-256 checksum in our version manifest.

My Mac will not open the app.
PDF Pro Panel 3 needs macOS 13 Ventura or newer — check under Apple menu → About This Mac. Our Mac app is signed and notarized by Apple, so a warning that it "cannot be verified" or "is damaged" means that copy did not come from us or was altered on the way. Delete it and download it again from the download page; you can compare the file with the SHA-256 checksum in our version manifest.

An update fails with "Update could not be installed".
In version 1.6.4 and later, our unified in-app update engine streams downloads directly with real-time percentage progress and 1-click restart for both Installed (NSIS) and Portable editions without opening your web browser. If you are upgrading from an older legacy build (1.4.0 or earlier), download the v1.15.3 installer once from the download page; all future updates install automatically in-app.

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 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 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 you can still open, read, search and print PDFs. Editing, form filling, conversions and saving processed documents require a licence. Choose Buy now or activate an existing key; your files remain unchanged.

How many computers can I use one licence on?
Direct Desktop Pro Lifetime covers up to 3 computers. Store editions use the purchase and device terms shown by their stores; existing purchased licences retain their entitlements.

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?
Windows and signed Mac desktop editions are available directly, Android through Google Play and Windows Store through Microsoft Store. iOS and Mac App Store listings are coming soon. Store purchases are separate from website licences.