Pick your role
Each of these is a real workflow, not a feature list. Start where your documents actually are.
Cleaning before delivery, redaction, and clause-level review
- Strip internal comments and metadata before a document goes to the other side
- Redact properly — remove content, do not cover it with a rectangle
- Review a contract for clauses that trigger obligations in a specific jurisdiction
- Make scanned exhibits searchable so they can be cited
Tables out of PDFs, statements split per customer, month-end bundles
- Convert a statement or invoice table into a spreadsheet and verify the totals
- Split one bundled statement into a file per customer before sending
- Merge a month-end pack and compress it under the portal's size limit
- OCR scanned invoices so amounts become searchable
Confidential files, per-recipient copies, retention hygiene
- Watermark each copy with the recipient's name so onward sharing is attributable
- Protect a salary or review document with an open password before sending
- Clear metadata that reveals who edited a document and when
- Split a combined file so each person receives only their own pages
Supplier documents, cross-border obligations, traceability evidence
- Check a supplier contract for data-export and sanctions clauses before signing
- Clean a specification of internal review comments before it goes to a supplier
- Make supplier certificates searchable with OCR
- Verify what a specification actually says after conversion
Scans, drawings, manuals, and large archives
- OCR a scanned manual so it can be searched rather than browsed
- Compress a scanned archive without losing the text layer
- Export a figure from a long report as an image at a usable resolution
- Merge field reports and photos into one document
One workspace, not five tools
The usual path for a single document is: convert it somewhere, clean it somewhere else, upload it again to have it reviewed, download it, then compress it because it is now too large to send. Every one of those steps means the file leaves your device and comes back. PDFnoted keeps it in one place, so the steps follow each other instead of starting over.
What runs where
| Upload-based tool | Desktop software | PDFnoted | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clean, merge, split, convert | Server | Local | Your browser |
| OCR and AI repair | Server | Local | Cloud, per page |
| Installation | None | Required | None |
| File retained afterwards | Varies | No | No |
| Works on a phone | Sometimes | No | Yes |
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a different tool for each job?
No, and that is the point. The usual route is to convert a file in one tool, clean it in another, and re-upload it somewhere else to review it — with the document leaving your device at every step. PDFnoted keeps the file in one workspace so those steps follow each other without re-uploading.
Which parts are free?
Cleanup of metadata, headers, footers, annotations and text watermarks; the standard PDF tools — merge, split, compress, convert; and basic OCR. AI reconstruction of watermarks baked into images, and the cross-border compliance scan, are paid.
Does my document leave my device?
For most operations, no — they run in your browser. Features that need a model, such as OCR on a scan or AI reconstruction, run in the cloud, and only the pages that need that work are sent.
Can I use this for documents covered by client confidentiality?
Yes. Local processing is the reason many firms prefer it to an upload-based service. If your policy forbids documents leaving the device at all, use the browser-side tools and skip the cloud features.
How does the compliance scan work?
You upload a document and it is checked against a corpus of Chinese, US and EU regulation — currently 219 instruments and 22,671 provisions — looking for clauses and data-handling terms that trigger obligations in a given jurisdiction. It returns the provisions it matched, not a score with no backing.
Can I try it on a real document first?
Yes. Open the workspace and load a file; the free tier covers enough of the pipeline to see whether it does what you need before any payment.
Is there an API?
Yes — the document processing and regulatory search endpoints are public, so a workflow can call them directly rather than going through the interface.
What happens to my file afterwards?
It is not retained. Files processed in the browser never left your device; files sent for cloud processing are not kept after the job completes.
Try it on your own file
Upload a document and see what comes back. Free to start, nothing to install.
Open the workspace — free to startKeep going
Sources and further reading: ISO 32000 (PDF specification); Adobe PDF Reference; Schema.org structured data; Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (arXiv:2311.09735). This page is a technical guide, not legal advice.