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Toolbox add-on overview

The Toolbox add-on is a low-level PDF manipulation library. With the Toolbox add-on, you can assemble the bits and pieces that make up a PDF. Create new content, set metadata, and manipulate existing PDF content. Even though it’s called an “add-on,” it is not an extension of the Pdftools SDK. Instead, it is a separate SDK focused on detailed, fine-grained PDF creation and modification. Meanwhile, the Pdftools SDK is for high-level PDF processing.

The Toolbox add-on is made for engineering teams that need:

  • Fine-grained control over PDF structure and content
  • Programmatic PDF creation from scratch, including pages, text, and images
  • Content extraction and manipulation at the element level
  • Metadata management for document properties and custom attributes
  • Page-level operations such as copying, reordering, and assembling pages from multiple sources
  • High-performance native libraries with a small memory footprint and predictable runtime behavior

What Toolbox add-on doesn’t include​

The Toolbox add-on is a low-level PDF manipulation library that doesn’t include:

  • Viewer components. Use the PDF Viewer SDK for viewing features.
  • Job orchestration, distribution for scaling, UI, or low-code-driven document processing pipelines. Use the Conversion Service instead.
  • High-level PDF processing pipelines such as PDF/A conversion, optimization, or rendering. Check out the Pdftools SDK instead.
  • Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) and other machine learning document intelligence features.