Many online legal documents you will find will be in Portable Document Format, or PDF. PDF is designed to be printer and share-friendly, but it is not easily editable within the original formatting.
Opening a PDF in Microsoft Word
On the library public computers, you can use Microsoft Word to edit a PDF. To start, download the PDF document from the internet that you would like to edit.
Next, open the application Microsoft Word (It is a blue square with a large "W" on it).
If it opens up to a blank document, click the "File" button in the to-left corner to ensure that you are in the Home page.
Click "Open," and then click "Browse."
This will open up the files that have been saved to the computer. Find the document that you saved to the computer (it will most likely be in "Downloads" or "Documents."
Select the document, then click "Open" in the bottom-right corner of the window.
After this, you will get a pop-up window saying "Word will now convert your PDF to an editable Word document. This may take a while. The resulting word document will be optimized to allow you to edit the text, so it might not look exactly like the original PDF, especially if the original file contained lots of graphics." Click "OK."
(if it is a larger document, this may take some time.)
Below the taskbar in Word (where it says File, Home, Insert, etc.) there will be a yellow banner saying "PROTECTED VIEW"--as well a button that says "Enable Editing." Click the button.
When you click the "Enable Editing" button, you may get the same pop-up as before. Click "OK" again.
Congrats! You can now edit a PDF in Microsoft Word! Make sure to press the save button (or the hotkey CTRL + S) frequently so you do not lose your work!
Exporting as a PDF
When you are all done with your edits, you can export the document back to a PDF for easy sharing and printing.
To do this, click the "File" button again.
Then, click "Export."
Click "Create PDF/XPS Document," name your document so you know it is your version, not the original (such as adding your initials or "edited" to the title), select "Documents," and then "Publish."
Now, you have your own version of the edited PDF!
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