I’m trying to choose between Smallpdf and ChatPDF for working with long PDF reports. I mostly need summaries but occasionally edit pages too - which would make more sense for me?
Honestly they do different jobs, ChatPDF is just for asking questions and summaries while Smallpdf is more the editing side. If you mostly need summaries, that’s the one that fits. For the occasional page edits, honestly Word opens PDFs pretty decently, so you might not need a second tool at all.
I had a similar issue handling long policy documents at work. Chat tools are decent for answering questions, but they cannot edit pages, which is why I prefer PDFcap. You can upload your document to pdfcap.com to reorganise and edit the pages easily.
I wouldn’t use either of those if you need proper editing, as browser tools always mess up formatting. I learned this the hard way when my bakery invoices came out completely mangled. My tip is to just open the PDF in Microsoft Word to edit and summarise the text there. Avoid paying for online subscriptions when ordinary word processors already handle this perfectly well.
Had the same question last month putting together show notes from long reports. For summaries I’d honestly just try pasting sections into whatever AI chat tool you already use, works fine for that. For actual page editing you want something different than a summary tool anyway, so I would not expect one app to do both well.
@SneakySteel agree, that’s what I do too, pasting a chunk at a time into a chat tool. For the odd page edit Word opens the PDF fine, though on my old laptop the bigger reports crawl a bit.
@emily.7 Chunking works, but it can lose context across a long report. I’d use ChatPDF for summaries and questions, then Word only for occasional page edits, saving a copy first since formatting can shift.
I use ChatPDF when I need to pull a summary or ask questions about a long report, then Smallpdf for practical jobs like rearranging, splitting, compressing, or converting pages. They solve different parts of the workflow, really. For tutor materials, I usually summarize first and only edit the pages I actually plan to share.
For your mix, I’d use ChatPDF for understanding and summarizing long reports, then Smallpdf when you need to remove, rotate, reorder, or otherwise edit pages. If you want one tool for everything, test Smallpdf’s current AI summary and chat features first, since its editing workflow is broader; I’ve found switching tools is often easier than forcing one app to do both.
@wallabies That matches how I handle claim files. I always save a copy before touching pages, because reordering or deleting shifts the numbering I rely on later. For long reports I pull a few pages at a time into a chat window instead of dumping the whole thing.