Use cases
See exactly how people use PdfPix for everyday document tasks. Each workflow includes the scenario, audience, step-by-step process, tools used, and the result. Find the workflow closest to yours and adapt it to your needs.
Small business, freelancer, bookkeeper
You've been collecting invoices, statements, and receipts as separate PDFs all month. At month-end, you need to combine them into a single PDF organized by date for your accountant.
How to do it
- 1Collect all PDF invoices and receipts into one folder on your computer
- 2Open the Merge PDF tool and drag all the files into the upload area
- 3Drag the file cards to reorder them — oldest first, newest last, or by category as your accountant prefers
- 4Click 'Merge' and download the combined PDF
- 5Open the Compress PDF tool to reduce the file size before emailing
Result
A single organized PDF ready for accounting, sent in under a minute, with all files processed entirely in your browser (no confidential invoices uploaded to a server).
Student, academic, journalist
You have a PDF research paper you need to quote, paraphrase, and cite. The PDF is text-based (not scanned), so you need it in Word format to copy and edit passages.
How to do it
- 1Open the PDF to Word tool and upload the research paper
- 2The tool extracts the text layer and writes it into a .docx, one heading plus one text block per page
- 3Download the .docx file and open in Word, Google Docs, or LibreOffice
- 4Expect to reformat: tables, columns, images, and the original fonts are not reconstructed, so budget time to tidy the layout
- 5Use Find & Replace to locate specific passages you want to quote
- 6Make sure citations are accurate and use a proper citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago)
Result
An editable Word document containing the paper's text, ready for annotation, quoting, and citation once you have restyled it.
Anyone who needs to sign a contract (business, freelancer, tenant)
You received a PDF contract via email. You need to sign it and return it. The old way: print, sign, scan, email. The new way: sign directly in your browser.
How to do it
- 1Download the contract PDF to your computer
- 2Open the Sign PDF tool and upload the contract
- 3Draw your signature in the canvas with your mouse, trackpad, or finger — this tool takes a drawn signature, not a typed one
- 4Sign. The signature is stamped onto the first page, bottom-right, sized automatically to the page
- 5Download the signed PDF and email it back to the sender
Result
A signed contract without a printer or scanner. The signature is drawn onto the first page as an image at a fixed bottom-right position, so it is a visible mark of intent — not a cryptographic digital signature, and it does not appear on any later page.
Legal, HR, healthcare, insurance
You have a document containing personal information (names, addresses, account numbers) that you need to share with a third party. The information must genuinely be removed, not just covered over.
How to do it
- 1Open the Redact PDF tool and upload the document
- 2Choose 'Text Search' and type the words to remove, or 'Page Region' and set the rectangle as a percentage of the page
- 3The tool renders each page to a canvas, paints the redaction onto that raster, and re-embeds the page as an image — so the original text and vector objects are never written to the output
- 4Accept the trade-off: every word on a redacted page stops being selectable text, and the file grows because pages become images
- 5Verify by selecting all, copying, and pasting into a plain text editor, then searching for the removed terms
- 6Also check document properties for author, title, and subject, and check bookmarks for headings that name the removed section — rasterising handles the page content but leaves metadata and bookmarks untouched, so clear those with the Extreme mode of Compress PDF
Result
A document whose sensitive page content is absent from the file rather than hidden behind it, verified by copy-paste and text extraction before it is shared.
Anyone who needs to email a large PDF
You need to email a 200 MB PDF (perhaps a high-resolution catalog or technical manual) but email providers cap attachments at 10-25 MB. The recipient needs a readable file, not a low-quality mess.
How to do it
- 1Open the Compress PDF tool and upload the PDF
- 2Choose a compression level: Recommended keeps metadata and rewrites the object streams, Extreme also strips document metadata for maximum byte savings
- 3Click 'Compress' to re-serialise the file — a few seconds for a large document
- 4Check the compression report that downloads alongside the PDF, which shows the before and after size for each file
- 5Understand what is happening: this is a lossless structural rewrite, so images are never re-encoded and quality is untouched — but the savings depend entirely on how the original file was written, and a file that is already tightly optimised may shrink very little
- 6If you need real size reduction on a scanned document, the images themselves have to be re-sampled, which needs a desktop or server-side tool — a browser tab cannot do that work at reasonable speed
- 7For email, consider sending a link to a file-sharing service rather than fighting the attachment limit
Result
A smaller, structurally optimised PDF with quality completely unchanged — with an honest size report so you know exactly what was saved.
Anyone who needs to digitize paper documents (students, professionals, archivists)
You have a stack of paper documents (a contract, a stack of receipts, lecture notes) that you need to digitize. You don't have a scanner, just your phone.
How to do it
- 1Take the photos first, using your phone's built-in camera or — better — its document scanner mode, which handles edge detection and perspective correction for you
- 2Open the Scan to PDF tool on your phone browser
- 3Upload the captured images and arrange them in page order
- 4Click 'Create PDF' to compile the images into a single PDF, one image per page
- 5Review the result before sharing — the tool places each photo on its page exactly as shot, so any skew, shadow, or background captured in the image remains
Result
A digital, multi-page PDF ready to email, store, or share — with no scanner and no upload, though the image quality is whatever your camera captured.
Student, academic, professional report writer
You've written a 30-page report with separate documents: a cover page, the main body, references, and appendices. You need to combine them into a single, properly-ordered PDF.
How to do it
- 1Open the Merge PDF tool and drop all four files into the upload area
- 2Drag the cards to order them: cover page → body → references → appendices
- 3Use the 'Sort A-Z' button if you want to order by filename
- 4Click 'Merge' to download the combined PDF
- 5If the table of contents references page numbers, add them with the Add Page Numbers tool — it numbers the bottom centre of every page, starting from any number you choose
Result
A professionally assembled 35-page PDF in the correct order, with page numbers if needed — ready to submit or print.
Finance, accounting, data analyst, business
You have a PDF report with tables of monthly sales, expenses, or inventory data. You need to analyze the data in Excel — sort, filter, create charts, run formulas.
How to do it
- 1Open the PDF to Excel tool and upload the PDF
- 2The tool groups text into rows by vertical position and splits cells by horizontal gaps
- 3Download the .csv file and open it in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers
- 4Verify that the data is correctly placed — check the first few columns and rows
- 5Fix any misaligned cells (coordinate-based detection handles clean bordered tables well, but multi-column layouts and borderless tables need review)
- 6Save the result as .xlsx from your spreadsheet app, then sort, filter, and chart the data
Result
A CSV of the table data extracted from the PDF, ready to be saved as a workbook and analysed. Hours of manual data entry eliminated.
Business, academic, anyone working with international documents
You have a PDF document in another language (a contract, a research paper, a manual) and need an English translation. The document is text-based, not scanned.
How to do it
- 1Open the Translate PDF tool and upload the document
- 2The tool extracts the text in your browser, then sends the first 6,000 characters to a translation service
- 3Choose your target language and click 'Translate'
- 4Download the translated text as a .txt file — the wording is translated, but the PDF layout, images, and design are not reproduced
- 5Be aware of the limits: anything past the 6,000-character mark is truncated and left untranslated, so split a long document into sections and translate each one
- 6Review the translation for technical terms and proper nouns (machine translation is good for general text but needs human review for specialised content)
Result
The document's text translated into your target language as a plain-text file, ready to read or to paste into a layout of your own.
Executive, researcher, journalist, consultant
You have a 100-page PDF report (industry analysis, academic paper, market research) and need to extract the key points in under 5 minutes.
How to do it
- 1Open the AI Summarizer tool and upload the PDF
- 2The tool extracts the text in your browser and generates a structured summary
- 3The summary includes: TL;DR (2-3 sentences), key findings (5-7 bullet points), main arguments, and conclusions
- 4Download the summary as a PDF or copy it to your notes
- 5Use the summary to decide if you need to read the full document, or extract specific sections using Split PDF
Result
A 1-2 page summary of a 100-page document, saving hours of reading and letting you quickly decide which sections deserve deeper attention.
Business, legal, anyone sharing internal documents
You need to share a draft document or contract with internal stakeholders. The document should be clearly marked as not-yet-final or confidential, but you don't want a permanent mark that requires editing out later.
How to do it
- 1Open the Add Watermark tool and upload the document
- 2Choose 'Text' watermark and type 'DRAFT', 'CONFIDENTIAL', or your custom text
- 3Set the rotation to 45° for the classic diagonal watermark
- 4Adjust the opacity (around 30% is usually right — visible but not obscuring text)
- 5Choose the position (center is most common)
- 6Click 'Apply' to download the watermarked PDF
Result
A clearly watermarked document that everyone recognizes as draft or confidential, ready to share with the appropriate audience.
Anyone who has a damaged PDF (failed downloads, disk errors, incomplete transfers)
You have a PDF that won't open, displays garbled text, or only shows some pages. The original file may be corrupted from a failed download, disk error, or incomplete transfer.
How to do it
- 1Try opening the file in a different PDF viewer (Adobe Acrobat, Chrome, Preview) to confirm it is actually corrupted and not a viewer problem
- 2Open the Repair PDF tool and upload the file
- 3The tool re-parses the document and re-serialises it, which resolves a damaged cross-reference table or badly written object streams
- 4Download the rebuilt file — a report shows the page count and the before/after size for each file
- 5Be realistic about the limits: this is a re-save, not data recovery. If the file is truncated, missing whole objects, or full of null bytes, the parser will reject it and no repair is possible. For critical documents that fail here, a dedicated recovery service is the next step
Result
A cleanly re-serialised PDF for files whose structure is damaged but still readable, with a per-file report telling you which files could not be parsed at all.
With 30+ tools, the combinations are nearly endless. Tell us about your workflow and we'll suggest the best tools to use.
