Frequently asked developer questions

Over the years, thousands of iText and iTextSharp questions have been posted on StackOverflow, many of which were answered on a voluntary basis by our support teams. To avoid duplicates, we have bundled about 300 questions in the free ebook ‘The Best iText Questions on StackOverflow’. You can also find these questions online by clicking on one of the topics listed below!

Download free ebook »
Ask a question about iText »

PDF in general

Slightly off-topic questions and answers on PDF files in general.

Getting started

How to get started with iText? Some basic answers to some basic questions.

Fonts

When creating PDF documents, it's important to use the correct font and the correct encoding.

Images

Having troubles with images? Read these questions and answers first.

Absolute positioning of text

Adding text using coordinates on a page can be done in different ways.

Absolute positioning of lines and shapes

Learn more about the operators and operands that are needed to construct paths, stroke lines and fill shapes.

Tables

PdfPTable is one of the most used classes in iText. Find out how to use it here.

Table events

PdfPTable is one of the most used classes in iText. Did you know tables and cells can also trigger events?

Page events

Headers, footers, watermarks are only a couple of features that can be implemented with page events.

Parsing XML and XHTML

iText isn't an URL2PDF converter, but it can convert simple XHTML to PDF. Read more about what's possible and what isn't.

Inspect a PDF

Want to take a look under the hood of a PDF? This is where you start.

Manipulating existing PDFs

Merging, splitting, stamping existing PDFs? Learn how to do it correctly by reading these questions and answers.

Interactive forms

Did you know that there are different types of interactive forms in PDF? One type is based on AcroForm technology and another one based on XML Forms Architecture (XFA).

Actions and annotations

This section is reserved for all things interactive (except for interactive forms).

Content parsing, extraction and redaction of text

Everything you need to know if you want to extract (or even remove) content from a PDF.

General questions about iText

Every overview has a miscellaneous section. This is that section.

Legal questions

Although StackOverflow is meant exclusively for technical questions, many developers also struggle with legal questions. We hope these answers are helpful.