ExecutiveDesk

1. Getting started

Open a PDF

File → Open (Ctrl+O) or drag a PDF onto the window. ExecutiveDesk is tabbed — you can have several PDFs open at once, each in its own tab. Recently used files are under File → Open Recent.

A 60-second tour

1. Read with the thumbnail navigator, page controls and zoom; press Ctrl+F to search inside the document.
2. Organise from the Pages tools — reorder, rotate, delete, merge, split or extract.
3. Compress a bloated file from Tools — pick a preset and see the size drop live.
4. Upgrade to Pro to edit, annotate, secure, redact, fill forms, sign, OCR and batch.
5. Save (Ctrl+S) or Save As to write your changes to a new file.

2. The workspace

• Ribbon tabs — Home (open/save/print, undo/redo, view modes, annotate/add-text/sign, rotate/delete pages), Page, Edit, Form, Convert, Protect, Organize, Batch, View and Help. The current tier and an Upgrade to Pro button sit at the top-right.
• View modes — Single page, Two page, or Continuous scroll.
• Document tabs — one per open PDF; an unsaved tab shows a *.
• Thumbnail panel — every page; click to jump, drag to reorder.
• Bookmarks / outline panel — the document’s outline, when it has one.
• Page area — the current page, with zoom, fit and a find box.
• Job queue — long operations show progress and can be cancelled.

3. Viewing & reading (Free)

• Navigate — the thumbnail panel, Previous / Next, and a go-to-page field. Zoom in/out, fit-width or fit-page.
• Search (Ctrl+F) — type a word to jump to it; matches are highlighted on the page and Next / Previous cycle through them, with an “N of M” count.
• Bookmarks / outline — open the outline panel to jump to sections in a structured document.
• Dark mode — a comfortable dark reading theme that follows your Windows light/dark setting.

4. Organising pages (Free)

Page tools live on the Page and Organize tabs and work on the thumbnail grid.

• Reorder — drag a thumbnail to a new position, or use Move Up / Move Down.
• Rotate, delete, duplicate — on the selected page(s).
• Merge — combine several PDFs into one; insert pages from another file at a chosen point.
• Split / extract — pull a page range out to a new PDF.
• Crop & resize — adjust a page’s crop box (drag) or resize it to a preset.
• Page labels — set custom page numbering labels (e.g. i, ii, iii… then 1, 2, 3…).
• Images ↔ PDF — build a PDF from images, or export pages to image files.

5. Compress & optimise (Free)

ExecutiveDesk’s compression tool shrinks a PDF — or a whole folder, via Batch:

• Presets — Low / Medium / High, with a live size preview so you can trade quality against file size before committing.
• Fine control — image downsampling (target DPI) and JPEG quality, plus stripping of metadata and duplicate objects.
• Savings report — a before/after summary of how much smaller the output is.

6. Edit & annotate (Pro)

Add content

• Add Text — drop a text box, choose font, size, bold/italic and colour with a live preview, then position it (drag, resize, or type an exact X / Y / W / H).
• Edit Page — add shapes (rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow), images and text onto the page, with zoom and move/resize while you compose.

Annotate

• Text markup — highlight, underline, strike-through and squiggly, with colour and opacity.
• Drawing — rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow, freehand pen and sticky notes.
• Manage — remove the last annotation or clear them all; flatten them into the page so they become part of the content.

Page furniture

• Headers & footers with tokens for page number, total pages, date and file name.
• Page numbering and Bates numbering (sequential legal/exec numbering across a set).
• Page background — a colour or an image (fit or fill).

7. Watermarks & stamps (Pro)

• Watermark — overlay text or an image across a page or the whole document; control opacity, angle and placement.
• Stamps — drop “DRAFT”, “CONFIDENTIAL” or your own stamp for review copies and controlled distribution.

8. Security & redaction (Pro)

• Password & permissions — set or remove an open password, and control whether the document can be printed, copied or edited.
• AES-256 encryption — strong encryption for the whole file.
• True redaction — permanently removes the underlying text and images in the redacted area, not just a black box drawn over them. The content is gone, so it can’t be copied out or recovered.
• Sanitise — strip hidden metadata and other traces before you share a file.

9. Forms (Pro)

• Build fields — text, checkbox, radio, dropdown, list, button and signature fields, placed and sized on the page.
• Fill existing form fields, then Reset to clear them.
• Flatten a filled form so the answers become fixed page content.
• Import / Export (XFDF) — move a set of answers between copies of the same form.

10. Signing (Pro)

Sign a document right on your machine — no cloud routing:

• Type your name in a signature font,
• Draw your signature with the mouse or a pen, or
• drop in an image of your signature.

Then place and size the signature on the page. Everything stays offline.

11. OCR for scans (Pro)

The OCR tool reads the text in a scanned (image-only) PDF and adds a hidden text layer, making the document searchable and selectable. After OCR you can find words with Ctrl+F and copy text that was previously just a picture. OCR runs entirely on your device.

12. Batch processing (Pro)

The Batch tab applies one operation to many files at once:

• Compress, watermark, add page numbers, convert to images, or merge.
• Add the files (or a whole folder), pick an output folder, and run.
• Watch the queue and progress, cancel if needed, and check the per-file result log when it finishes.

13. Bookmarks, attachments & metadata (Pro)

• Bookmarks — add bookmarks to a document and jump to them from the outline panel.
• Attachments — attach files inside a PDF and extract them again later.
• Metadata — edit the document’s title, author and other properties.

14. Free vs Pro

ExecutiveDesk is free to use for everyday reading and cleanup. A one-time Pro upgrade unlocks the full professional toolkit.

Pro is a one-time purchase (not a subscription) through the Microsoft Store, and re-unlocks automatically on your other Windows devices signed in to the same store account. Upgrade any time from Help → Upgrade to Pro….

15. Keyboard shortcuts

16. Troubleshooting

• A large operation seems stuck. Big files are processed on a background queue — watch the progress indicator; you can cancel and retry with a lighter setting (e.g. a lower compression preset).
• Search finds nothing in a scanned PDF. The page is an image with no text layer — run OCR first, then search.
• Annotations look different in another reader. Use Flatten to bake them into the page so they render identically everywhere.
• Redaction didn’t seem to remove the text. Make sure you applied the redaction and saved — true redaction removes the underlying content on apply; a drawn black rectangle (an annotation) does not.
• A Pro tool is greyed out. It’s part of the one-time Pro upgrade — unlock it from Help → Upgrade to Pro….