User guide

From download to your first document in ten minutes

Everything you need to install, activate and use PDF Studio day to day — then the notes your IT department needs to roll it out across many machines.

1

Install

  1. Download the installer from the download page. It needs 64-bit Windows 10 or 11; ARM PCs need Windows 11.
  2. Check the file before you run it — especially if you will hand it to other machines. The result must match the checksum on the download page: 
    certutil -hashfile PDF-Studio-Setup-1.3.0-x64.exe SHA256
  3. Run the installer and follow the steps. It installs for every user on the PC and adds a “PDF Studio by ElixTechs” shortcut to the desktop and the Start menu.
2

Activate

When you buy, or ask for a trial, you are sent a licence key — a .pdfkey file, or text that starts with PDFS1.

  1. Open the app. If it is not activated yet, the activation screen appears straight away.
  2. Choose “Open key file”, or paste the key, then “Activate”.
  3. The app contacts the licence server to register this PC. After that it works offline, and quietly renews its registration in the background whenever a network is available — it needs to connect at least once every 30 days.
No internet on that machine? When the server can’t be reached, choose Activate without a network, then Show my request code; send us the code and we reply with an activation code to paste into the same screen. Details
Activating a licence
Activating a licence
3

Find your way around

The first launch offers a short tour. Replay it any time from Help ▸ Replay the Welcome Tour.

  • The sidebar: All tools, Edit PDF, Signatures, Viewer, History and Settings.
  • The menu bar: File, Edit, View, Tools, Window and Help — and every tool is also in the Tools menu.
  • Tabs: each open document has its own tab, and each tab remembers the tool you were using.

Useful shortcuts: Ctrl+O open · Ctrl+T all tools · Ctrl+E edit · Ctrl+W close tab · F1 this guide

4

Use a tool

Every tool works the same way. For example, merging several files into one:

  1. Open All tools and choose Merge PDF — or from the menu: Tools ▸ Organize ▸ Merge PDF.
  2. Add the files and drag them into order.
  3. Press Merge. A new file is written; your originals are never modified.
5

Edit and sign

Edit PDF (Ctrl+E) shows the pages and lets you work on top of them: add text, fill form fields in place, drop in an image, a mark or a shape, draw freehand, and stamp the date.

  • Text you add picks up the document’s own font and size, so it looks like it belongs.
  • Save your signature once under Signatures — drawn, typed or photographed — and use it in any document.
  • For a certificate-based digital signature, use Tools ▸ Security ▸ Sign Digitally.
6

Scanned documents

OCR PDF makes a scanned document searchable and copyable, and detects the language of the pages automatically. Clean Up Scan straightens, de-speckles and brightens the pages first.

For Arabic documents The built-in engine reads English and Chinese. For Arabic, install Tesseract OCR from Settings ▸ Optional upgrades, then pick Arabic under Settings ▸ OCR languages — once.
7

AI on your PC

Summarise, Ask this PDF, Translate and Extract details run a language model on the PC itself — the document is never sent anywhere.

  1. Open Settings ▸ AI assistant and choose Install the assistant (about 52 MB).
  2. Choose an AI pack — the Balanced pack is recommended for Arabic and English (2.3 GB, downloaded once).
  3. Open a document, choose Ask this PDF, and type your question. Each answer points to the page it came from.
8

Arabic

Arabic works in every tool and is detected automatically: shaping, joining and direction in added text, watermarks and page numbers; search that finds the plain spelling; and conversion to and from Word that keeps the fonts. Arabic fonts are bundled, and Arabic OCR needs the Tesseract OCR add-on (step 6). The application interface itself is in English.

9

For IT

  • Silent install, with the key applied machine-wide: 
    PDF-Studio-Setup-1.3.0-x64.exe /S /LICENSE=PDFS1...
  • The MSI: msiexec /i PDF-Studio-1.3.0-x64.msi /qn, with the key deployed to %ProgramData%\PDF Studio\license.key.
  • Each activated PC takes one seat. Reinstalling Windows or renaming a PC makes it a new one, and a retired PC’s seat can be freed.
  • A PC only needs occasional HTTPS access to the licence server: pdfstudio-licence.elixtechs.com (1.2.0 and earlier: pdfstudio-licence.nmteches.com)
  • For isolated networks: offline activation (see step 2).
  • Every detail — Intune, Group Policy, Configuration Manager, network and security — is in the deployment guide.
10

When something is wrong

  • Settings ▸ PDF engine ▸ View log shows the PDF engine’s latest messages — copy them when reporting a tool error.
  • Help ▸ About shows the version, organisation and licence serial.
  • Every message the app shows, and what it means, is in Troubleshooting; quick answers are in the FAQ.

Ready to start?

Download the app, or ask for a trial key.

Download Request a trial key