Working on PDFs on the iPad

Many are giving up laptops in favor of the iPad. This portable, lightweight tablet is great for working on the go. And you'll find a variety of apps for viewing and editing a variety of different document types, including Word documents. However, things are different when it comes to PDF files.

While there are many ways to view PDFs on the iPad, you'll need a special app for editing, creating and annotating PDF files.

iAnnotate PDF ($10) is an inexpensive app that gives you a variety of options for working with PDFs on the iPad.

iAnnotate PDF provides a number of ways to load PDFs into the app. You can sync them via iTunes, open them from Safari, Dropbox, and email. Once you load your PDFs into the app, you can organize them into folders. You can then view thumbnails and search the full text of the PDFs.

There are a variety of tools for working with PDFs. You can draw on them, highlight or underline text, add bookmarks, copy text, fill out forms, enter notes, and more. To make editing easier, you can customize the toolbars. There's also tabbed browsing that remembers your place in PDF documents.

Your annotations are saved with the PDFs, so they're available in other PDF programs like Adobe Acrobat. You can also print your annotations.

iAnnotate will also create PDFs from Word documents and PowerPoint files. Or convert a Web page to PDF format using the app. This feature is currently in beta, so there may be glitches.

When you're done, you can share your PDFs via email or Dropbox. You can also transfer them via iTunes or iAnnotate's free desktop transfer software. iAnnotate is also compatible with Apple's AirPrint.