This tutorial shows how to adjust line spacing in PDFs with Adobe Acrobat. [Typewriter sounds] Hello, my name is Erin. I’m a technical writer and editor who shares step-by-step software tutorials and writing tips for the real world on this channel and on my blog at erinwrightwriting.com. Adjusting line spacing in PDFs is different
than in other word processing software, such as Microsoft Word and Google Docs, because text doesn’t flow from page to page within PDFs. Instead, you have to adjust the line spacing within the individual text boxes. As such, this process is only recommended for short documents. If you need to adjust line spacing in long PDFs, strongly consider converting it to a Microsoft Word document, adjusting the line spacing within Word, and then converting it back to a PDF. Regardless of these limitations, today we’re going to look at how to adjust line spacing in a PDF. Then, we’ll troubleshoot how to move text boxes if your text overlaps. Plus, we’ll quickly walk through the steps to add a blank page with new text boxes if you need extra space. I’ll be using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. The steps are the same in Acrobat Standard DC, Acrobat 2020, and Acrobat 2017. Adobe’s free PDF software, Acrobat Reader, does not offer the ability to adjust line spacing. To begin adjusting line spacing, select the Tools tab. Then select Edit PDF in the Tools Center. Next, select Edit in the Edit PDF toolbar if it’s not already selected. Now, select the text within a single text box. Once the text is selected, select the arrow in the Line Spacing menu in the Format pane and choose a new number from the drop-down menu. The numbers are based on the size of your current font. Alternatively, you can enter a specific number into the Line Spacing menu. You can also select the arrow in the Paragraph Spacing After menu and choose a new number from the drop down menu if you want to add or reduce space after individual paragraphs. As with line spacing, you can enter a specific number into the Paragraph Spacing After menu. Once you’ve made your changes, your new line spacing should appear immediately. The text box containing the text you are adjusting will lengthen to accommodate an increase in line spacing. However, the text boxes below won’t move. If an overlap occurs, open the Edit PDF toolbar as shown in the previous section, select one of the text boxes, hover your cursor over the border until it becomes a movement cursor, which looks like crossed arrows, and then drag the selected text box to a different location. As mentioned in the introduction, text in PDFs doesn’t flow from page to page. Therefore, if you increase line spacing too much, some of your text may disappear at the bottom of the page. If that happens, you can select Edit followed by Undo, or press Ctrl + Z, to reverse the line spacing adjustment, and then copy the excess text. Then, select the Page Thumbnails button, followed by the Options button. Select Insert Pages from the drop-down menu, and then select A Blank Page. The default location in the Insert Pages dialog box should be after your current page. Select the OK button to insert the page. Now, select Add Text and put your cursor on the page where you want to place the next text box. And then right-click and select Paste to insert the copied text. You can now adjust the line spacing on this page and on the previous page, as we did in the first section. As always, remember to save your PDF when you’re finished to save your changes. I have created many other videos about Adobe Acrobat including “How to Redact PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro” and “How to Attach Files to PDFs in Adobe Acrobat.” Please see the playlist titled “How to Use Adobe Acrobat,” which is linked below, for the complete list. The companion blog post for this video listing all the steps we just performed appears on erinwrightwriting.com, which is also linked below. Feel free to leave me a comment if there’s a specific topic related to Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word, or Google Docs at that you would like me to talk about in the future. And please subscribe to my channel and give this video a thumbs-up if you found it helpful. Thank you so much for watching! [Typewriter Sounds]
