Now, sharing presentation slides is a very controversial topic for many different reasons. After all, you will provide all the work you’ve put into developing your presentation for free. But what exactly is it that you’re giving away? Your ideas? Your skill? Your time?

Presentations are a work of art. When you share them in an edible format, you are losing control over what you have created. If you don’t want to see your hard work watered down by edits, you should not share your original files. However, you can offer two alternatives. Either share only the figures and images you used in your slides. Or make your presentation slides available in a format that does not allow simple editing.

In other words, if someone wants to edit your ideas in a way you don’t approve of, they have to start from scratch and can only draw inspiration from your template.

Here are 2 ways and several tools to safely share your presentations online.

1. Share Presentation Slides as PDF

You can export your PowerPoint or Word presentations to PDF. The disadvantage of this method is that you will lose all animations. If that is not an issue, try the following tools.

KoolWIRE

The easiest and most universal way is to use an online tool such as KoolWIRE.

Using it is dead simple. Browse for the file on your computer, choose the output format, i.e. PDF, enter your eMail address, hit start and wait for the download link to be delivered to your inbox. When I tried it, it took less than a minute and in less than 5 minutes I had my PDF.

File Savr

Now you will want to share the file. Let’s say you don’t have a website or server of your own. Also, you probably don’t want to eMail a huge file every time someone asks for it. Fortunately, the web has a simple solution in store. There are many free online tools that let you share your files through the web and you don’t even have to sign up for the service.

File Savr is just one of many. You can upload files of up to 10GB, more than enough for a PDF file. Simply select the file you wish to upload. Once uploading has completed, File Savr will display the download page for the file. Save the URL and share it with people interested in your presentation. A CAPTCHA test must be passed before the file can actually be download.

I have previously reviewed 5 Easy Websites to Share Files Online Without Signing Up.

PDF Hammer

If someone would like to use parts of your work, they could prepare a PDF presentation and, using a PDF editor, merge individual presentation slides from different sources.

One free online tool to edit PDFs is PDF Hammer.

Along with KoolWIRE it was reviewed in Aibek’s post about Simplest PDF Apps Ever: Merge PDFs, PDF to DOC, Convert to PDF.

2. Share as Web Presentation

You can upload and share your presentation through an online service. While this preserves the original design of your slides, including animations, single slides can not be extracted and re-used in another medium. If this is what you desire, go ahead and give SlideBoom a try.

SlideBoom

You can use SlideBoom as a guest. However, presentations will only remain online for 7 days. To use SlideBoom to its full potential, you should register. There is a free version, which allows you to upload up to 100 presentations. It supports animations, add-ins, audio, video, groups, graphical annotations and blog or website embedding.

SlideBoom creates a summary page for your presentation, which includes the actual presentation, your notes, a transcript, and optional sharing options. Members can vote on you presentations and download them if the owner has unlocked this option. Below is a demonstration of an embedded presentation.

If you would like to improve your presentation skills, check out my post on 10 Powerpoint Tips for Preparing a Professional Presentation.

Do you feel comfortable with sharing your presentation slides?

Image credits: duchessa

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For all the small business owners, and indeed the tech geeks who just love new apps to play around with; here are three great online office apps that will help you reduce all of that paperwork.

Online OCR

This tool will take care of a lot of boring transcription that we all have to do now and again. I often find myself transcribing accounts and business plans into a text editor when I really should be using this tool.

To put it bluntly, it takes a scanned image of a document or a PDF file and transforms it into an editable text document such as MS Word or MS Notepad (*.txt file). This service is free – to an extent. There is no registration required and you can convert five pages every hour as an unregistered user which is plenty for small business owners. For registered users, the first five pages are free but after that every page costs 10 cents. I’d imagine this is only for large businesses who would be scanning documents with hundreds of pages in a short period of time.

We have previously covered other OCR applications such as Varun’s review of JOCR and Saikat’s Top 5 Free OCR Software Tools.

Fill Any PDF

Many of us will have to fill in several forms when tax returns are due, insurance policies are required or indeed for business procedures. It’s common practice to receive those forms in PDF format either by e-mail or by downloading them and then printing them out to fill in by hand.

FillAnyPDF is an extremely easy-to-use online PDF form editor that allows you to fill in a PDF form using a text editor or freehand writing. What’s more, you can also create your own PDF forms and share them online with other people and request they fill them in using this editor.

Obviously security is a big issue when dealing with confidential forms online so FillAnyPDF gives you the option to ‘whiteout’ certain areas and only make those areas visible to the person the form is intended for. The last thing you need is somebody having access to your social security number and personal details.

We have discussed in the past various other options.   Ones that immediately spring to mind are Karl’s review of PDFVue and Jackson’s review of FormulatePro which is a Mac option.

WatchDox

As we touched on above, security is paramount concerning business documents. But you can’t exactly put a PDF in a briefcase and handcuff it to yourself. It’s impractical and sort of weird. Plus I’m sure every thief that sees you will definitely want that briefcase.

Anyway, this is a method of sharing pretty much any document online, in a secure environment with the intended recipients.

Here is how it works:

1. You upload the document, enter the recipients e-mail address and set the security measures on the document such as an expiration or curtain.
2. You add instructions for the recipient concerning the document (optional).
3. Then the recipient gets an e-mail with a link to the document.
4. They can view the document with registration or downloading anything.
5. He or she cannot copy or download the document without your direct permission.
6. Once the expiry date comes the document is destroyed and is no longer viewable online.

I think this is actually one of the best ways of sharing documents in business these days because, as governments and banks around the globe have shown us, CDs, e-mails and hard copy documents have a habit of going missing along with tonnes of valuable information.

Hopefully these three tools will make your office life flow a little smoother.  Which office apps do you use regularly?

Image Credit : foundphotoslj

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There’s an option to have RSS feeds converted into printable PDF newsletters (which can then be emailed to you) and the service is called Tabbloid. The only slight drawback to this service is that the recipient has to, at least, have a basic understanding of what a RSS feed is (so they can enter it into the right boxes). But assuming they know what a RSS feed is when they look at one, they can set up Tabbloid to have website updates emailed to them as a very neat and tidy PDF newsletter which they can then read at their leisure and pleasure (and print out if they want). Or a RSS-knowledgeable person could set it up for them.

You could also use this service to start collecting blog posts in PDF format as a kind of archive. Have them emailed to you and then archive them for posterity. There’s quite a few possibilities to this service.

Getting it set up is a cinch – and you don’t even need to set up an account!

1.  Add the RSS feed

When you click to get started, you will be asked to enter the RSS feed in the first box in the top left. Let’s choose MakeUseOf’s feed as an example:

Or as you can see, the site also offers lists of recommended feeds, if you are not sure what to subscribe to. MakeUseOf isn’t there though! Oh dear…..

You can see on the right hand side which feeds you have chosen and you can remove any of them at any time.

Enter Your Email Details

Now you have to enter your email details.

You can choose between daily delivery and monthly delivery (just remember that with a monthly delivery and a very busy feed like MakeUseOf’s, you are going to get a HUGE file!). Also choose your delivery time and time zone.

If you want to preview the issue before clicking on “save delivery options“, just click the big blue “generate sample issue now” button and you will get a PDF to preview. One thing here though – your issue will come through without a pdf file format at the end (which is slightly irritating I have to admit). So in Explorer, open it by right-clicking on it, choose “open with” and then choose Adobe Acrobat or any other PDF reader.

You can view a sample issue here that I quickly made using the MakeUseOf feed.

As you will see, all weblinks are clickable and the layout is fantastic. One little minor gripe that I would make is that the rest of the newsletter is not very customisable. You can’t give the newsletter another name for example. But that is all very minor and may only bother you if you wanted to make a personalised newsletter to send out to your blog subscribers. But if you only want to use Tabbloid for post archiving purposes or to read RSS feeds inside your email, then it seems to be a perfect service.

Do you know of any other similar services that do a better job? If so, tell us all about them in the comments.

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Now, most newsletters are distributed by e-mail simply because it’s cheaper, easier, faster and capable of reaching an international audience. But plain old e-mails are boring and lack the magazine style ‘umph’ that good newsletters have. In this article, I’m going to show you how to create a high quality newsletter and convert it to a PDF file for distribution all using the basic programs on your PC.

Firstly, consider how you want each page to look. Often, lines along the top and bottom of a page with page numbering and titles really improve the image and the proper laying out of images and text is essential.

Make sure your draft leaves enough space for text and images along with sidebars for contact details and advertisements. You can see my MakeUseOf newsletter above that I created using MS Paint in just a few short minutes. Here’s how I did it.

Under the ‘File’ menu in MS Paint select page set-up and enter in the measurements seen here in the screenshots for the margins. I find these work best when converting in a later stage. Also, select the option to ‘Fit to’ and enter in 1, for one page. This will stop MS paint from spreading your newsletter over multiple pages horizontally. For the page measurements, 450 x 600 are good for the average newsletter. To make your page this size, simply drag the blue dot in the bottom right hand corner until the coordinates in the bar across the bottom read 450 x 600.

Go to MS Paint and create basic yet colourful images that will act as your theme. For example, you can see how I created the top, bottom and sides of my pages as well as a logo for the front page. Arrange the images on the page so that your newsletter outline is how you want it. Then find your text, and by using the text input function, copy & paste it onto the page. If there are images to be placed within the newsletter, do this bit by bit and change the width of the text input box to accommodate for the images. To insert images, use the Paste From function as you did earlier.

Rearrange your document until the ‘Print Preview’ is as desired. When it is, your document is ready to be converted into a PDF format which is the industry standard for eBooks, E-Zines and newsletters. I suggest using Primo PDF .

Their PDF conversion software comes in two forms; the free version and the premium version. While the free version does the job okay, you can also opt for a free trial of the premium version which offers better quality and more options and customization tools.

Once you have downloaded this and installed it, click ‘From File’ along the top menu bar. Then add your newsletter to the file ready to convert as shown in the screenshot. Click create and save the file to your desired location.

Now you’ll have a professional looking newsletter ready to be e-mailed to your subscribers. This same method can also be used to create reports or indeed to publish your own PDF E-Zine.

Do you know of any other free ways to achieve the same thing? If so, then we would love to hear about it in the comments.

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How do you convert that PDF to text? You could print it and try and scan it back into your machine using a free OCR software or you could grab this awesome little application called PDF Text Extractor.

We have covered several applications for retrieving data from the confines of a PDF document but this application concentrates on the text. If that is what you need – your text and nothing but the text – then this is the program for you.

Let’s take a look at it and how it can convert a PDF to text.

I started by downloading and installing the program. It was a quick process and the MSI installer file was about 1.13 megabytes. When I ran the application this is what I saw:

This is a really easy layout and graphical user interface – simply select the PDF you would like to convert to plain text. Then you select the folder you want the converted plain text file written to. You can type in a full path for each or hit the button next to the blank field to browse.

When you are ready your window will look something like this:

Now our PDF document that contained our text – the text that we need to reformat and put into a manual is in a file. That file looks like this before we begin:

7 full pages of text, text and more text. That would be a lot of typing for poor Betty our departments secretary. So I went Googling and found our little application. I fired it up and hit that magic convert button. Literally it took 2 seconds and then a window popped up that said it was complete:

I went looking in my d:\ drive for the file. I actually realized I had no idea what it was called or what the extension would be. I sorted the files by date created and found what i was looking for:

I opened the text file up and as you can see above the files name seems to always be TextFile.txt. The contents of the text file were just that….all of the text that I needed! Yeah!

This is what I saw:

My formatting was not 100% there but all of the glorious text was and now it is a just a matter of copying, pasting and formatting. Nowhere near as big of a job as it was before! And we do not need Adobe Acrobat Reader, Writer or any other nonsense on our machine. Just this little application and a PDF file. You can open the text file in Word, Notepad++, Wordpad or whatever your favorite editor is.

How do you extract text from a PDF? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

Download: Text Extractor

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One innovation over the last couple of years has been the e-reader, which should solve some of the problems of reading off the computer screen. While these look very promising to me, they’re still in the early stages of adoption and above all, they are still quite expensive. And many of you already carry around a perfectly good e-reader substitute in your pocket, in the form of an iPhone or an iPod Touch. I’ve been using my iPod Touch and I’ll tell you how to read documents such as PDFs or even MS Word documents on your iPhone’s native apps as well as a third party application.

Using your email

The easiest way (and quite usable) to read pdf files on your iPhone is to email yourself the PDF as an attachment. This is simple and you don’t need to install any app to do this. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to organize your emails in folders, so it really is best used for something simple to read. It does have a way to read in landscape mode. It works for MS Word, MS Excel files and most images. The attachments are saved on your device after loading them once so you don’t need a connection the next time you want to read it.

Using Files lite

Files lite is actually the best free app to read documents and PDF files on the iPhone or iPod touch. You create a virtual folder on your computer into which you drag and drop the files you want to read. You can create folders in the application or the virtual folder, so it’s easy to manage a lot of books and articles. I tested this on Windows 7 but it should also work on other version of Windows, Mac and even Linux. I’ll quickly show you how to set it up so you’ll have an idea of how easy it is. The app also comes with a good guide too.

1. Download the app.
2. Setup a network folder using WebDAV. It’s very easy and can be read about in their tutorial.
3. You can setup subfolders in the application or on your computer.
4. Now drag your files to the network folder, make sure that your iPhone is connected to the same Wifi network.

It’s that easy. Now you can carry around your documents and read them wherever you go, without having dying forests on your conscience. And you read it correctly, you don’t need any cables to synchronize the documents. If only iTunes would work that easy when syncing your music!

Alternatives

There are many apps in the App Store that can perform similarly to Files lite, but that you have to pay for. One restriction of Files lite is that you only have 200 MB available to play around with on your iPhone, but that can hold many PDF files. The other apps differ from each other mostly in the way you transfer files, such as over the air, via USB, FTP or downloading from a web address. A good paid app is Good Reader ($0.99) and another is Stanza (free), which is more a complete e-reader which has a PC suite to manage your books and the possibility to download many free e-books.

Do you find reading from your iPhone as comfortable as reading from paper? If you like the e-reader apps, then you don’t really have an excuse to not read your articles and books.

Image credit: nxb

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Although these tools are highly similar in concept, they show differences in overall functionality and abilities. Today we’ll review the most prominent of these sites for you, so you may find the one that ultimately fits your every need. Here they are, in no specific order.

Issuu

What Issuu currently lacks in word of mouth, it makes up for in raw style. You won’t encounter anytime soon a more beautiful and fine-tuned site to publish PDFs online than Issuu – especially graphically. With slick looks, this player will continue to conquer the hearts of many nerds.

You can browse Issuu’s ‘collection’ based on category, rating and overall popularity. The level of Issuu content is very high, and you’ll encounter many professional magazine publications. If you’re looking for a good eBook read, Issuu can help you a long way.

In terms of interface, Issuu heads a more experimental path. Away with the well-known PDF reading set-up, hello eye-candy intuitive experimentation. Issuu allows you to read your PDFs like a real magazine, two by two. You can click the page to zoom in and have a more detailed view. Intuitively flip the pages, or use the OSX-doc-like index at the bottom of the page.

The design, as well as the revolutionary interface makes Issuu my new personal favourite.

Check out a MakeUseOf PDF example on Issuu here.

Scribd

If Issuu is my ‘new’ personal favourite, whose throne did it take? Reader, meet Scribd, another wonderful PDF publishing site. If you think Issuu is too much mumbo-jumbo, this might be what you’re looking for to publish PDFs online.

The Scribd online reader once again deviates from the conventional interface – although not as extreme. Scribd also allows you to read your PDFs per page, or in a two-by-two ‘book’ format. The ’scroll’ view is the more interesting part of the interface. Simply move your mouse towards the bottom of the page and click to gently scroll down your page. Although you can summon a graphical index of pages, this mode is more aimed to userswho are off to read instead of scan the documents, and makes a great interface for reading eBooks.

Last month we used Scribd to promote the online viewing of one of our MakeUseOf manuals – The iPhone Guide. The pilot proved a success, with the document even making the Scribd hotlist. Check out a MakeUseOf PDF example on Scribd here.

Google Docs

Google Docs – for those of you who’ve been living under a rock in the past few years – is the cloud computing office application by internet and software giant Google. This free and online suite covers all bases – word processing, spreadsheets, and so on. Not everyone knows this, but besides functionality for txt and doc files, Google Docs perfectly integrates with PDF files.

Strictly following the definition we gave at the start of the article, this site might not be allowed a place in this list. However, because Google Docs allows you to not only ‘view’ your PDF files, but also gives you a (1.0) platform for spreading them, I personally think it should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Alas, a 2.0 platform is not included, but the basic functionality for this application allows you to pretty much do what you want with it – upload your files and make them public. Next, you can share the link with pretty much everyone you know. Embedding the document is sadly not possible. Incredibly simple and easy to use, albeit limited in functionality.

Check out a MakeUseOf PDF example on Google Docs here.

Have you ever published a PDF online? It’s easier than you think! Tell us which site(s) you used and why you did(n’t) like them in the comments section below.

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The one downside of a PDF is that you’ll need a PDF reader. Sure, there are some great free applications out there, but it’s yet another install – especially if you’re not on your own computer.

More and more services are developed to let you view PDFs online in your browser. With all the code on a remote server, no downloads or installs are necessary. PDFs are entering the domain of cloud computing!

Today we’ll take an in-detail look at a few of these services – PDFMeNot, Vuzit and SamurajData – simple, extensive and minimalistic.

PDFMeNot

You might know the guys behind PDFMeNot from other successful projects like BugMeNot (access ‘must register to view’ sites) and RetailMeNot (giving you wonderful discounts by providing tons of coupons).

Like said previous projects, PDFMeNot trades in simplicity and great functionality. Don’t expect something fancy, with tons of offers and premium accounts – PDFMeNot does what you want it to do, does it well, and does not bother you with anything else.

PDFMeNot allows you to upload a PDF file from your computer, or to provide a valid web link. After some moments, during which the PDF gets read and processed to a more web-friendly format, you’re able to view your document(s) in-browser.  Since popular documents get cached, you won’t always have to wait out the conversion process.

The web viewer temporarily caches the whole document and provides you with a basic interface. You might not be able to make annotations, or do any kind of markup, but PDFMeNot does a good enough job as a reading tool.

Vuzit

To be honest, Vuzit isn’t really a tool to view PDFs online. However, on the site you’ll be able to find a ‘free test tool’ that does everything we need it to do.

Like PDFMeNot, Vuzit allows you to upload a file from your hardrive, or locate an existing file online. You might want to watch out what you use it for, though, as Vuzit shows a few of the most recent documents on its webpage – explicit and private content are thus not recommended.

The site keeps your document cached for some time, which allows you to give the link to your friends and/or colleagues. Vuzit makes an excellent choice if you want to pass a document along, and not everyone might have the means or the appreciation for PDF files. Furthermore, Vuzit also has a nice little ‘download’ button, for those people who still prefer an offline back-up.

The basic Vuzit interface and functionality highly resembles that of PDFMeNot – it even looks a tad better and comes with search functionality.

SamurajData

If you’re a minimalist, you might prefer SamurajData. This is without any doubt the lightweight PDF reader, with minimum looks and minimum functionality.

Instead of displaying the PDF in your browser, SamurajData converts the document to a series of GIF images. As you might know, these images take up very little memory, but come with a certain loss of quality. As such, your text might well be readable, but you won’t have the most pretty of documents.

SamurajData uses no flash, and instead has a completely HTML-based interface. You can browse the different pictures (read: pages) and optionally rotate them.

In short, if you’re looking for a really lightweight solution to view PDFs online, SamurajData probably is your man. However, if you’ve got a decent internet connection, I highly suggest to you to give one of the former two options a shot.

Another option you might also want to consider is Scribd.

Do you ever use an online PDF solution, or do you prefer to read your documents offline? If you do, what website do you use? Tell us all about it in the comments section below!

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Most of the more populated sites I found did not have Romance sections at all, while every other topic under the sun, seemed to be well covered.

Thus, I did a little digging, and uncovered a few great resources of free romance ebooks for the starry-eyed dreamer in all of us.

eHarlequin

If it’s quality you’re looking for, eHarlequin is undoubtedly the way to go.  Since eHarlequin actually publishes its own ebooks, you can be sure that every novel is thoroughly proofread and reader-approved.

Unfortunately, for this same reason, eHarlequin offers a very limited selection of free romance ebooks, a total of 17. The titles it does offer covers a variety of topics, from vampires in “Kiss Me Deadly,” to “Speed Dating” a Nascar driver.

1 romance ebooks

1 Romance eBooks is another great resource for editor approved novels. Like eHarlequin, the selection is quality-assured albeit limited, but unlike eHarlequin, 1 romance ebooks has a sexual content rating that allows readers to determine the raciness of the books they are to read.

You can also read an excerpt of the novel, as well as view its tagged subjects.

Some of the free romance ebooks that are offered can also be downloaded in formats like LIT or EPUB, although the most common format seems to be PDF.

All Romance eBooks

If you don’t mind giving up a bit of your personal information to register at All Romance Ebooks, you can gain access to over a hundred and fifty published romance ebooks. Like 1 Romance Ebooks, All Romance eBooks has a sexy-o-meter that warns you when you’re wandering into risque territory (or goads you on, depending on the person).

Feedbooks

If you’re more of a classic-love-story type of romantic, then you will appreciate the selection of public domain books that Feedbooks has to offer. With titles such as “Anna Karenina” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” it’s hard to go wrong.

Unfortunately, the books are only listed by title, so it will be hard to find a good book unless you either know exactly what you’re looking for, or are willing to read through all of the book descriptions to pick out one you find interesting.

Free Online Novels

If you don’t mind a spartan reading list, Free Online Novels has a long list of romance ebooks that is still updated regularly. The descriptions of the books stop at the author, for most books, and for others, whether it can be downloaded.

Free Ebooks

Now, we begin to get into services that are a bit more community inclined. Although Free Ebooks requires an account to access its literature, an account allows you to download books in various formats, favorite books, and rate them on a 1-5 scale. When you are browsing books, you can arrange them by rating, to make sure you are reading the most well written and interesting stories.

Memo Ware

Memo Ware is a website that is primarily aimed at providing ebooks that are accessible on PDA devices. It boasts a good sized database of over a hundred and fifty books that are ranked by readers on a five star scale. Unlike Free Ebooks, there is no registration required, and the details page of every novel includes information on the file type, and which platform the file is intended for (for example, Palm or PPC).

Although it seemed at first that free Romance Ebooks are a rare commodity on the web, hundreds of novels were found during the course of this article. Keep in mind, these are just the list of books that can be downloaded to be read offline or taken with you on your PDA. If you do not mind reading books via your browser, there are plenty more resources available to you, such as Public Bookshelf and Trinity Moon.

If your search for good romantic fiction takes you to the realm of user-written novels, be sure to take a look at Fiction Press, which is a good resource just because there are 63,000 stories. Although you will have to dig through the more grammar challenged submissions to find the really juicy stories, the amazing writing you will find is worth it.

Are there any must-sees that I missed? Do you have your own methods of channeling your inner mushy fluff-o-holic? Let loose in the comments!

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No I am not a mad man or a lunatic – it is simply a different time we live in than back then. Now almost anything can be found on the internet – and Manuals Online has you covered when it comes to owner manuals and user guides.

When you arrive at the site you will see something that looks like this:

To search for a product enter its name or model number into the search field. A generic search will give you LOTS of results and a model number will usually result in one or two items. I decided to search for a DustBuster. I typed in Dustbuster and hit Search.

I got back 4 items for four different models. You can download the manual as a PDF, save it to your folder on their website (requires registration), you can also view forum discussions about your item as well.

I got a little more specific and typed in Sony Play Station 2. I got a few results and chose the model I was looking for. I was then able to preview the owner manual and eventually downloaded it.  I could also ask members for help or share information about the product.

You can see below the item’s additional product literature. In this case it looks like the quick start guide but it can vary from product to product.

Upon opening the document it will display the PDF in your browser. You can also save the file by right clicking on the link and choosing “save target as”.

Alright so who’s ready to go clean out their attic/filing cabinet?  Do you have another slick trick when it comes to dealing with owners manuals? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments! Now I have to get back to some old school gaming

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Have you ever had a PDF file that you needed to convert to an editable Word document? Your boss is yelling at you to copy and paste 500 pages from a PDF into a Word document and you are scared that you will have to type this whole document out – fear not MakeUseOf readers, we have a solution for you!

How about copying a block of text or a chart from a PDF to Word or another text editor?

I can assure you that it has been literally torture over the years. There have been a few costly programs that did what I wanted – but even then, it was not done well. I’ve searched for a lot of different programs that would let me convert PDF to an editable Word document in the past, read an older review here.

Now, a free product comes moseying along and does the deed AND WELL!

Let’s take a look at AnyBizSoft’s PDF to Word Converter.

You need to download the application and submit your email address to get a free registration code.

Without registering, the program will only convert 3 pages. So I gave in and gave them my address. I got an email back quickly with my registration code. Next, you will hit the Register button in the upper right-hand corner next to Help. Put in your email address and serial key. It will thank you for registering and then we can start converting!

Hit the Add PDF button in the middle of the window and point the program towards your PDF file that you want to convert to Microsoft Word. On the bottom of the window are your output settings. I set mine to a custom location but you can also have it save in the same folder as the source by checking the top box.

Once you select your PDF, all you have to do is hit the big blue Convert button. That will start your PDF processing. It took about 45 seconds to convert a 5-page PDF that was made up of shaded columns.

The program told me it was complete. I hit OK and the Microsoft Word document loaded.

The document was so on the money it was scary. Because of some graphics overlapped with lines, there was initially a spacing issue. That was easily corrected – because EVERYTHING WAS EDITABLE!

Wow, this is simply awesome!

Do you have a favorite tool that you use for conversions like this? If so please share it with us in the comments!

Found this article interesting? Check out other articles discussing ways to convert PDFs to editable Word documents:

- Convert That PDF To Word. Get That Text Back!
- PDFtoWord: Accurate PDF To Word Converter
- ConvertPdfToWord: PDF to Word Doc Converter

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Sure, the latest version of Reader has more bells and whistles, but you just want to read the flubsy PDF! Just open it like a web page and read it like a web page. Well, I went a-searching and here are some light alternatives to the hefty Adobe Reader.

FoxIt Reader

Download Size: 3.56 MB
Installed Size: 7.14 MB

The FoxIt layout is very similar to Adobe Reader and has a lot of the same functionality. You can add notes, zoom, search on text, view the document without images and more. It opens so quickly though!

Some of the more advanced functions are only available if you opt-in to FoxIt’s updates and eBay toolbar. The bills have got to get paid somehow I suppose. Overall, a fine piece of software backed by over 50 million downloads of it so far.

PDF-Xchange Viewer

Download Size: 17.9 MB
Installed Size: 25.5 MB

When you open PDF-Xchange Viewer, it is readily apparent that it is more than just a PDF reader. You’ll find all of the functions you would in FoxIt without having to sign up for updates or the eBay toolbar. That’s always a plus to me. Yes, the download is larger and it does take up more space when installed than FoxIt, however it also offers you the ability to customize its appearance and how it functions. You can set the threads to use for image rendering, amount of RAM to utilize, and text and image rendering quality amongst other things.

Perfect PDF Reader

Download Size: 22.4 MB
Installed Size: 14.6 MB

Yes, there seems to be a discrepancy there, doesn’t it? The download package contains some additional software that isn’t necessary for the base functions of Perfect PDF writer. That fact alone leads me to believe that the name Perfect is, yet again, a misnomer.  Why do companies insist on claiming perfection?

The interface is reminiscent of Office 2007 with it’s little orb thing in the top left corner and similarly confusing layout of menu items. You may be able to surmise that I am not a fan of Office 2007 as well.

Perfect PDF Reader has a limited tool set, making it essentially just a PDF reader. The one option I really don’t understand is the Open in Reader shortcut. Isn’t the point of this to take Adobe Reader out of the equation? Overall, I wouldn’t recommend Perfect PDF Reader.

Cool PDF Reader

Download Size: 632 KB (That’s right, less than 1 MB.)
Installed Size: 632 KB (No coincidence here.)

Cool PDF Reader is a straight-forward executable to read PDF’s with. Open it up, navigate to the PDF you wish to read and boom, there it is. You can zoom in, zoom out, page forward and backward and well, that’s about all.  If the name of the game is something small and fast to simply read a PDF, this is the winner. If you download the standalone version, you can also run it without permissions or from a USB drive.

Which one is best? That’s truly dependent on what your tastes are. For me, I like PDF-Xchange because it has some neat editing controls. FoxIt obviously has something going for it, based on the sheer number of downloads. Perfect PDF will appeal to the neophyte user whose first introduction to software included Office 2007. Cool PDF is definitely for the purists.

There are many other PDF reader options out there – which one do you use? Why do you use it? Let others know about it in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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That’s where doPDF shifts into place. This free PDF converter not only rescues you from having a hole drilled into your pocket where loose change starts to seep out but it also saves you a whole lot of productivity time as well.

Here’s How to Get Started

doPDF is extremely simple to use so if you don’t have a lot of patience with 3^rd party applications fear no more because you’ll have a smooth time with this software.

First you need to download this app. Once you’ve installed the application just open up a document in Microsoft Word, NotePad, WordPad or pretty much any other text editing software. I’m going to use Microsoft Word for the sake of this tutorial.

Next you have to go to File-> Print-> doPDF.

Now you just have to click OK and a small window will pop-up asking you where you’d like to save your new PDF document, once you’ve chosen your preferred location then click OK once again.

And you’re finished, it’s as easy as that! With these few steps you’ve just created a high quality PDF document.

Before the conversion:

After the conversion:

Conclusion:

The entire process from begining to end shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. It is possible that as doPDF converts a document the file can suffer from minor unusually formatted images or texts, however for the most part doPDF is pretty accurate.

At the moment there’s no option to print web pages (for example: news articles or pages off a forum) that automatically divide into separate pages, thus you’ll most likely end up with lines that divide the article or page throughout your PDF document, if you decide to print directly from the web.

Another quick issue I discovered was the size of the file doPDF creates. The size of the document can be a bit large and sometimes daunting depending on how many images a page may contain, though if you can manage to use WinZip or a free similar app to ZIP the file up, it shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Please feel free to MakeUseOf the comment box below and leave us your thoughts.  What similar apps do you use?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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However, nothing is perfect. And although imperfections create the uniqueness and beauty in most cases, we want software to be as close as it can get.

This is the main reason why plug-ins were created; one might say to pimp out your applications to fit your preference. Ask any three Firefox users why they use the browser, and I guarantee that you’ll hear the word ‘add-on’ more than once.

However, Firefox add-ons have been discussed multiple times over, but I was stunned to see nearly no one took on the job of looking into Microsoft Word Plugins. We even covered Open Office extensions, but never looked at free Plugins for Microsoft Word.

Save as PDF or XPS in Office 2007

Converting documents from and to PDF is a matter that keeps a lot of tongues occupied. But why all that hassle of converting if you can just save your document to PDF out of Word?

Microsoft released Save as PDF or XPS, a free add-in which adds the PDF format under the save-as menu, together with XPS (Microsoft’s own PDF-like format), and works quicker than many premium solutions I’ve tried before (including the official Acrobat one).

You can also send your documents over the internet in an email, in PDF or XPS format, with a few clicks of the mouse.

The Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS add-on works with the following Office 2007 applications:

• Word 2007
• Access 2007
• Excel 2007
• InfoPath 2007
• OneNote 2007
• PowerPoint 2007
• Publisher 2007
• Visio 2007

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Open and save Docx files in Office 2003

One of the biggest bothers that came with the splendid looking Office 2007, was a new file format – the only bother, if I might say.

OK, I get it. It’s smaller in size, stores additional style types, and so on – honestly, if I could just open it in previous word versions, I’d love it.

I’ve always worked around this problem by either saving it in doc format myself, or by converting it if I was using a non-2007 computer. It wasn’t long ago that I discovered the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. We have already looked at different ways to view docx files.

This download makes all the applications in your 2003 suite compatible with their Office 2007 companions. When installed, you can not only open, but also save docx files.

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Open ODF (OpenOffice) Files In Word

A friend once asked me to print out a document for her. With her liking freeware, she sent me an odf file.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with it, odf is the standard format for OpenOffice documents, an open-source Office alternative.

Luckily for you and me, Sun Microsystems (the guys we know from Java) developed an Office plug-in. It’s compatible with both Office 2000, 2003 and 2007, and it allows the user to open, edit and save in the odf format.

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Do you know of any other Microsoft Word plugins? If so, let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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With nearly 3 million articles in the English version alone Wikipedia along with its sister wikis is an Alibaba’s treasure trove of information. Now, Wikipedia gives us a chance to take this information and use it as one of the oldest forms we have known – the humble book.

It is just the Wikimedia Foundation’s attempt to make ‘human knowledge’ accessible to everyone…online and now also offline. It started off with the German Wikipedia last year and now since February 26th it has moved onto the English version too.

To capsulize the process, users can collate the article pages of their choice and create a book from this existing material through a simple link available in Wikipedia. The compilation of articles can be arranged into chapters, given a title and finally exported as a PDF or as an Open Document and even sent to be professionally printed (at a cost).

One essential caveat is that a user has to create an account and log-on to access the book features.

The Wikipedia Help page goes through a step by step process of the nitty gritty…but I will give it a spin here too.

Logging In / Create Account

On the extreme top-right of a Wikipedia page is the link to Log-in or Create Account. Creating a new account is a simple process of giving a user name and a password. No email verification is required.

The Create A Book Menu

Search, browse and navigate to the Wikipedia article of your choice. On the left hand side, near the bottom is the create a book menu. It includes two items – Add wiki page and Books help.

Start adding the pages to your book by clicking the Add wiki page link on the relevant Wikipedia pages you want to include. The number of pages in the book gets automatically updated in the menu on the left. Two additional menu items – Show book (with a page counter) and Clear book appear in the menu.

You can also add an entire category within which the relevant page falls with just a single click. You can find the category hierarchy at the end of the article page.

Add The Title Of Your Book

With all pages added, click the Show book button to review your book. Here it is possible to add a book title (and a subtitle) and change the ordering of the wiki pages of the book through drag and drop. Unwanted pages can be dumped by a simple click of the ‘dustbin’ icon. New chapters can be included using the Create chapter link.

Many advanced functions like adding a particular revision or saving a book and improving the layout can be achieved through a combination of advanced functions. The Help page details those steps.

Download Or Order A Printed Copy

Voila! You have just ‘written’ your first book with the help of Wikipedia. Now, the finished book can be downloaded in PDF or OpenDocument format or ordered as a bound book. To download in the format of your choice, select the format from the dropdown and click the Download button. To order the book as a bound book, click the Order book from PediaPress button.

Wikipedia’s built-in rendering engine assembles the pages, grabs the images and parses them before they are passed on to the user in the final downloadable format. In its final avatar, my seven page Wikipedia selection transformed into a 4.4MB file downloaded as a 64 page PDF book. The end result was good…with neat alignments of photos and text.

If you take the PediaPress option, be prepared to dole out a few dollars as the starting price is US$ 8.90. Of course, the typesetting and publishing is of better quality and it comes bound too. A sample of a finished book can be seen on their site here.

Not many of us would even begin to create a home grown version of shelf lined Encyclopedia Wikipedia. But for smaller data needs, this feature comes as a welcome addition. Instead of individually downloading article pages as PDF’s we can now systematically arrange it into a PDF book for offline perusal.

Have you taken to this feature yet? Give us a glimpse into your thoughts in the comments section.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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So what do you do when you want to fill out forms online or edit a PDF? Need to mark up a PDF? Well you can’t do that with the free version of Acrobat Reader. So we have to find another solution!

Nifty website pdfVue does exactly what we need it to do. As long as we aren’t working on top secret documents (or even tax forms for that matter) we should have no problem in uploading our documents to PDFVue’s server and then manipulate them using their online Adobe Acrobat Pro-esque editor.

Let’s see what PDFVue has to offer and how we can Make Use Of It. (Pun intended – suck it up!)

It looks like they want you to click on the folder icon on the top left under the PDFVue logo. This will let you browse to your PDF file on your local machine. I chose a invoice I had in PDF format and uploaded it. It was under 100KB and took about 45 seconds to upload to their server.

When it was complete I had my full invoice in a web editor. I was able to mark it up, draw funny shapes and even stick sticky notes over crucial data so I wouldn’t get sued!

The tab at the upper right hand side of the screen that says Forms will give you the ability to edit forms and save the finished product. Using this feature, you can add text boxes and all sorts of corporate goodies.

Now I definitely won’t say this is a Acrobat Pro replacement for me but it will get the job done in a pinch. Of course if you are editing confidential information I would not go uploading it anywhere.  Pester the hell out of your boss until you get the tools you need to do your job!

There are also collaboration tools and some other nifty features discussed in the getting started guide available here.

If you have a Mac, Jackson has covered FormulatePro and in our directory, we have also looked at PDF Escape.

Do you use any of these or a similar tool to edit PDF’s? If you do let us know about your favorite – in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The PDF format has become the popular standard for sharing documents, so the ability to convert anything that you’re working on into PDF format would allow you to share data much more easily.  The best tool that I’ve found to convert anything to pdf is the free PDF converter called PDF995.

PDF995 can be used, as described in an earlier article on MakeUseOf, as a print driver for OmniFormat. However the full PDF995 suite of products has a whole range of functionalities that makes dealing with PDF formatting very simple.

Converting Anything To PDF Format

The power to convert any single document or image to PDF format becomes apparent once you start using the simple PDF995 print driver. For example, many businesses have a limited number of licenses for proprietary programming software like Visual Basic or Visio for graphical design. However, while you’re programming, you may find the need to show what you’re working on to a colleague or your boss who may not have the software installed. The easiest way to do this is by converting your work to a PDF file by printing it out to the PDF995 print driver.

For example, in manufacturing automation, engineers create screens on industrial Panelview units by using special Allen Bradley software to do so. This software is much like other graphical user interface design software, but in order to see the screens in design mode, you need to have the software. If your boss asks to see the latest screen that you’re working on, you can do so by printing it to PDF995 as shown below.

Within the printer list, you’ll find the “PDF995″ driver. Select that driver and print the file. The free version of the software will display a sponsor ad for about 20 seconds, and then after asking you where to save the PDF file, PDF995 automatically displays the PDF file within Adobe Acrobat.

This works for any program that you might be working with that allows you to print, including any special proprietary programming software, machine processor logic, or even graphic design programs.  By printing to a simple PDF file, you can attach the file and email your work to anyone you like, or publish it on the web as a downloadable file.

The Additional Features Of PDFedit995

When you download and install the PDFedit995 add-on, the features of this software extend far beyond just converting images and documents to a PDF file. The PDFedit995 application lets you do things like combining multiple docs to a single PDF file, automatically inserting links into the PDF, converting PDF’s back to HTML or Word Doc format, and it even provides integration with the Microsoft Word toolbar.

For example, just the other day I downloaded a PDF manual titled “How to Access MySQL with PHP.”  The manual is great, but in PDF format I can’t edit it or make use of any of the highlighting or notation functions that most word processors offer. With PDFedit995, it’s a breeze to convert any e-book in PDF format over to a Microsoft Word document or even into a HTML file.  Although converting to a Word document will not convert the images from the PDF document, converting the PDF to HTML format will.

All you need to do is start PDFedit995, click on the “Text” tab, and then click on the button labeled “Convert PDF to Word or HTML.” The following screen will appear.

In my case, I want to convert the PDF e-book on PHP programming to a Word document. So I browse to where I’ve saved the PDF file and then click on “Convert the document.” If you de-select the “Include Images” checkbox, the program will automatically convert the PDF to both HTML and Word formats. The Word format is great if you just need the text extracted from the PDF in an editable form. However, if you’re more concerned with formatting and including the images, the HTML format is best, as shown below.

In addition to this useful conversion utility, PDFedit995 also offers the ability to:

• Combine multiple existing word documents into a single PDF
• Automatically inserts hyperlinks
• Integrates with the Microsoft Word toolbar
• Add stationary (such as backgrounds or headers) to your PDF documents

How to Use Signature995

When you install the Signature995 add-on application, PDF995 will offer a few additional tabs that expand its functionality to include the ability to stamp each page, for example with the word “CONFIDENTIAL.”

Stamping pages can be very useful in a business environment where uncontrolled copies need to be identified on every page with “UNCONTROLLED COPY,” or in government offices where the classification level of the documents need to be identified on every page.

Other PDF Conversion Tools

PDFedit995 is just one of many PDF conversion tools that are available for free. It does have the annoyance of a sponsor pop-up window every time you use it. So if that tries your patience a little too much, consider some of the other tools we’ve covered on MakeUseOf before, such as doPDF for converting documents to PDF or tools like PDF Split and Merge. There were also a couple of lists posts such as cool PDF tools and simple PDF apps.

Which application you choose really depends on your specific PDF needs and what kind of features you’re looking for.

Do you have any favorite PDF tools or applications that convert anything to pdf? Tell us about it in the comments section!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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However sometimes you get a PDF file from a friend/colleague or from the Internet that is password protected. Some require a password to open, others have the fonts, images and other content protected and others prohibit you from printing the file. You can of course contact the person concerned to get the password, but there can be plenty of situations where you would want to use a password protected file otherwise! So, here I will try to tell you how to unlock pdf files be it for printing or viewing.

Freeware PDF Unlocker

Freeware PDF Unlocker is a free utility that allows you to remove passwords and open protected PDF files. What it does is that it creates another copy of the PDF file that can open without any password and that can work without limitations.

Getting it to work is a little cumbersome. You have to follow different approaches for different types of passwords. There is no GUI (user interface) available. However when you install the software it creates a CMD file on your desktop. All you have to do is to drag and drop your password protected file onto this CMD file and it will do the rest.

For removing passwords that prohibit you from tasks like copying and printing, you need not do anything and the CMD file will work as it is. Just drag and drop the file and you will get a “no password” file.

Now we come to the other type of passwords that prevent you from opening the PDF file. First off, allow me to clarify a bit here. The software is not for cracking passwords. However, it is great for another scenario. Suppose I send you a file that requires you to enter a password to open the file. Of course I will provide you the password if you are the intended recipient. You open the file, read it, find the contents useful and would like to get back to the file in the future.

So do you remember yet another password with all the passwords you are already trying to remember inside your brain? Or do you write it down? You could use some password storage solution but since you are not distributing the file and the password has already served its purpose (to allow only you to read it) why not just remove it?

Wondering why I cooked up that story? To try and explain to you that to remove this kind of password you require the actual password!

Ah.. Did I hear you groan with a ‘what’s the use then?’ Well, it seems like a catch-22 initially but I have been using the feature to my advantage for some time now. Basically its like “here, I am entering the password this one time, now give me a copy of the file that doesn’t require me to enter the password subsequently.” Its somewhat like enabling auto-login in Windows, you have to provide the password only once.

The procedure to remove such passwords is as follows:

• You would have to edit the CMD file on the desktop.



• Just right click on the icon and choose “edit”. Enter <theOpenPassword> against the -sPDF option (you might have to scroll to the right of the window if you don’t see it).



• I would suggest to save the file with a different file name indicating that you can use it to remove open type passwords. That way you won’t have to edit the commands every time or type long options in the command line.
• Now, like before, just drag and drop the file with the password onto the CMD file and you will get the no password version.

How To Add A Password To PDF Files

As a side note, in case you are wondering how to password protect a PDF document, you can use a couple of solutions. I do it with OpenOffice. Go to File > Export as PDF and then to the security tab. You can put in a password for opening a file and another for restricting content usage.

If you don’t have OpenOffice you can try PrimoPDF. I wouldn’t recommend Adobe’s offerings because they are pretty heavy and slow albeit more powerful.

If you know similar tools to achieve the same results, share them with us in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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• PDF requires an external application like Adobe Acrobat Reader (or any other free variants) while JPG does not.
• Browsers have the built-in capability to display images while handling PDF documents requires an external application or plug-in which may or may not be present.
• An external application comes with the handicap of loading times.  Plus the rendering of a PDF document happens only after the complete document is downloaded while images can be streamed in.
• Office applications also do a better job of handling images in comparison to PDF. To cite an example, a PowerPoint presentation with an embedded image goes faster than with a PDF document.

So, in some specific cases converting your PDF documents to an image format like JPG or JPEG could be the solution we are looking for.

1. Convert PDF to JPG (The Web Way)

No installations – just browse to these websites, upload your files and it’s done.

Zamzar

Perhaps, the most well known of the file conversion sites. Zamzar has been previously mentioned in Top Onlin File Converters.  The process is simplicity personified:  Choose the file to convert then choose the format to convert to (e.g. JPG) then enter your email address to receive the converted file then convert.

The minuses with the free service are that the file size is limited to 100MB with just 5 simultaneous conversions. Also, you might feel a wee bit uneasy uploading sensitive data without encryption support.

YouConvertIt (Beta)

Another previous mention at MakeUseOf but just warrants a second look here because it too does a similar job of converting a PDF file to its JPG equivalent. You can upload 5 files at the same time.

As YouConvertIt is still in beta, expect some conversion attempt failures.

Neevia Document Converter

Neevia Technology has a web interface which facilitates the conversion of PDF documents to image files. Select the conversion settings and upload your file. The converted file can be rendered in the browser or can be downloaded via an email link. Two dropdowns further give you control over image quality and resolution. The only visible restriction is the 1MB file upload size limit.

If you are wary of uploading sensitive files over the net, you need to look beyond the online solutions to something much more local. Thankfully these three pieces of free software take up the task.

2. PDF to JPG Converters for The Desktop

PDF-Xchange Viewer (Windows)

PDF-Xchange Viewer is a light feature-rich PDF document reader. The free version of the software is a capable document handler with most of the standard features expected. Add comments and annotations, mark-up pages with texts and objects, type within the PDF document along with plug-ins for both IE and Firefox are also included.

But the feature which interests us is the ability of the software to export a file or a page to the supported image formats like JPEG, BMP, TIFF, PNG and more.

Open the PDF file in the viewer, click on File – Export to Image and the dialog opens up where you can set the pages to convert, the image type to convert to and the destination folder. More importantly, the ‘Export Mode’ setting allows you to designate the number of image files for the subject PDF file. The ‘Page Zoom’, ‘Resolution’ and ‘Page Background’ also allow added finishing touches.

OmniFormat (Windows)

‘Omni’ means all and the OmniFormat document conversion utility lives up to the name. The free version permits active conversion and image handling of over 75 file formats including HTML, DOC, XLS, WPD, PDF, XML, JPG, GIF, TIF, PNG, PCX, PPT, PS, TXT, Photo CD, FAX and MPEG.

Using OmniFormat requires the installation of Pdf995 (it’s free too). Pdf995 is a fast and flexible PDF printer driver which makes it easy to publish PDF documents from any program. Pdf995 needs to be installed prior to the installation of OmniFormat. The free version of the software opens with a timed ad display.

This annoying part done with, the software itself is uncomplicated. It sets up a ‘Watch’ folder (or lets you set it up yourself). Any PDF file that has to be converted to JPG is copied into this folder. With the press of the ‘Single Pass’ button each single page of the PDF gets converted into the JPG format. With the ‘Start Monitoring’ button, PDF files can be repeatedly dropped into the watch folder for conversion.

Note of Caution: OmniFormat deletes the original PDF file in the watch folder after conversion…so be sure to copy the file you want to convert.

Virtual Image Printer Driver (Windows)

This open source application installs as an additional printer on the Printer’s applet and can convert any printable document to a BMP, PNG, JPG, TIFF or a PDF file. The Virtual Image Printer driver is based on the Microsoft universal printer driver core.

Simply, open the PDF file and print it by selecting the Image Printer Driver in the ‘Print’ dialog. The image file format and the compression range can be set in the Image Printer options box.

And When Everything Fails…

If you are away from a net connection and in want of the software’, the trusty ‘Print Screen’ button aided with any image handling application like MS Paint or IrfanView can do a stand-in job. I should know – I went this way before I came across the other six ways.

Do you know of any other methods?

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So with the news that Gmail now supports the reading of PDF files, I realised I could now do away with Adobe Reader being on my computer altogether. Hurray! Goodbye Reader and thanks for all the bloat!

Being sent a PDF file by email? View PDF in Gmail.

If someone now sends me a PDF file by email, all I have to do is click the “view” button in Gmail. This then sends the file to my Google Docs account for viewing (you may have to log into Google Docs first)

After logging into Google Docs, their lightweight PDF viewer immediately opens your file. As you can see below, the viewer gives you the ability to download the file and print the file.

Plus, just like Adobe Reader, you have the strip down the side which allows you to see thumbnails of all the pages so you can jump straight to a particular page.

Once you’ve finished looking at your file, just close Google Docs. Easy. No need to use Adobe Reader or FoxIt or any other installed software.

2. PDF file on your computer? Open it in Google Docs.

But what if the PDF file is not in your email? What if the PDF file is on your computer? Well then you can either upload it to Google Docs or to Gmail for reading in Google Docs.

To upload to Gmail, you can use a favourite tool of mine called Backup to email (or gmail) which integrates into your Explorer right-click menu. Then when you have uploaded the PDF file to Gmail, repeat stage one to view your file in Google Docs. You can also use Gmail as a nice little storage facility for your PDF files long term.

To upload your file from your computer to Google Docs (cutting out Gmail), Docs provides a variety of ways to get your file there. The easiest route is to go to Google Docs and use their file uploading tool.  The only snag with uploading it to the Google Docs server is that there is a 10MB file size limit.

If you do a bit of online searching, you can also find things such as a desktop tool to quickly upload documents.

Then again, once your PDF file is in Docs, just use their lightweight viewer to open it.    When you have finished and you don’t want to keep the file online, just delete it.   You will still have the original file on your computer.

What is absolutely amazing is the crystal clear picture quality and the very fast loading speeds that Google Docs provides. It really does put Adobe Reader to shame.

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So if you received a document of say names and email addresses in a file called Leads.PDF. You can open the document, print the document and even send the document on to others. But if you want to import that information into your email address book, an excel spreadsheet or otherwise manipulate the data – you just can’t.

Now as The Admin – can’t is not in my vocabulary. No I do speak English and know what it means….but I started to look for an answer. Most of them came back to buying Adobe Acrobat Pro – Mucho Dinero. Not an option for the little guy. Then I came across all these little sites also promising to help me for $29.99 or $49.99.

I looked around the web and then I searched good old MakeUseOf.com and found this article by Aibek from January of this year. He ran down some popular free PDF tools. And low and behold he listed exactly what I needed.  It’s called…..wait for it….wait for it…

FREE PDF to Word Doc Converter

I downloaded it from the link above, installed it and was greeted with this screen:

The fields and options are not only straight forward but simple as well. Just input the file you want to convert by hitting the browse button on the left and navigating to your PDF file. It will automagically set the output file to be in the same directory with just a .doc extension.

You can set how much of the document you want converted and what program if any should open the .DOC after it is created. You can choose your font, and if you want images and shapes to carry over.

That’s it.  Click the “Convert to Word Document” Button and you’re off. I sat back and waited for my 986 page document to convert and it only took a few minutes. It then popped up in Word 2003 – fully editable!

What do you guys use for converting PDF’s to text? Anyone have any better or other solutions?

How do you get numbers into Excel from a PDF? Is anyone actually using Microsoft’s version of the PDF format – called XPS?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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I quickly Googled around looking for a free, easy solution. Lots of places claimed to do what I wanted but the first one that did it EASY and FREE was doPDF.

It is a small download, less than 2MB and when it finishes installing you will have a new printer added to your system. When you need a PDF, all you need to do is “print” to the new doPDF printer. (It can be accessed using File -> Print menu in pretty much any Windows program i.e. Word, Excel, Paint, some image viewer etc.) I know I make it sound simple and all – but it really is THAT EASY!

If you don’t believe me and you are too lazy to try it yourself check out this video courtesy of doPDF…

This is simply awesome. Do you use something other than Adobe Acrobat Pro to create PDF’s? If so and it is free we would LOVE to hear about it. Why don’t you leave your favorite PDF creator in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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1. Ebook Search Engines

These are simple Google-like search engines but for PDF files. I usually start my ebook search using one of these sites. Type in the title of the document or book name you’re looking for and click on the search button. Find your book in the search results and click on download link. Done.

So far my top 3 ebook search sites are:

www.pdfgeni.com (MakeUseOf review)
www.pdf-search-engine.com (MakeUseOf review)
www.data-sheet.net (MakeUseOf review)

2. Scribd.com

In case you have never heard of this one before, the simplest way to define Scribd would be to call it Youtube for documents. People can upload whatever text documents they want and easily share them with others.

You’ll find lots and lots of free ebooks here. You only need to know what to look for. For instance try searching for George Orwell, Leo Tolstoi, etc.

And obviously it gets copyrighted ebooks much like YouTube gets copyrighted videos. I am not sure if they are doing anything to deal with them, but the fact is there are plenty of them on Scribd.

Oh and as we have mentioned before, Scribd is also an excellent resource for free document templates.

3. Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg (aka PG) has the largest collection of public domain books. These are the books that out of copyright and available for anyone to use for any purpose. Lots of books from the world’s greatest fiction authors such as Dickens, Joyce, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Anton Chekov and Edgar Allan Poe fall into this category.

This site is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. PG is an extremely popular site and now has over 20,000 works. If you’re not sure where to start check out their Top 100 page.

4. Free Ebooks For Your iPod, PDA, Smartphone, Blackberry etc.

For those of you who like to have ebooks on their portabe device we got some sites as well. Below are what I believe the best websites for books that can be read on mobile devices.

www.gutenberg.org
www.manybooks.net (MakeUseOf Review)
www.feedbooks.com (MakeUseOf Review)
www.booksinmyphone.com (MakeUseOf Review)

For iPhone users in particular there is a website called TextOnPhne. It’s a great ebook site that comes with its own ebook reader app. There are over 30,000 free books for your Apple device. Check out the demo video here.

5. Free Tech Ebooks

These sites are mainly for tech books, covering everything from computer science, engineering and mathematics to programming and web development.

www.freecomputerbooks.com
www.freetechbooks.com
www.onlinecomputerbooks.com

(Bonus) DailyLit

DailyLit is a bit different from the rest but I really like what they’re doing there. DailyLit can deliver a small excerpt from the book of your choice to your email on a daily basis. One excerpt per day, and so untill the book is finished.

The reason it wroks so well is that it only takes around 3-5 minutes to read each excerpt. If you feel like reading more you can request a next excerpt with a click of a button.

While more than a half of all books cost about $4.95 per book others are free. There are plenty of good titles among the free ones as well, some of my favorites include My Life and Work (by Henry Ford), Siddhartha (by Herman Hesse) and Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (by John D. Rockefeller). Check it out.

Are you aware of any other cool websites for ebooks? Share them in comments.

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- Merge multiple PDF files into one
- Insert certain pages from one PDF into another
- Rearrange, delete pages, rotate pages within the PDF
- Split single PDF document into multiple files
- Password protect PDF document
- Disable Priting functionality and more

For the most part the program is fairly intuitive, simply select the input PDF docs, choose desired action and click on save button. Though some other features like rearranging pages within the document or merging a part of one document with the other require brief illustration.

So let’s quickly go over it.

Collate, Reorder or Delete Pages in PDF Documents



The collate tab is probably the most extensive one. The above screenshot shows how to merge two PDF documents. This basically takes the contents of doc2.pdf and appends it to doc1.pdf.

There is also an option to merge only certain parts of each document. For instance, you can set it to take pages 4-5 from doc2 and append them to pages 2-7 in doc1. Simple.



If you want to reorder or duplicate pages within the same document you can easily do so by selecting the document several times and choosing different page range for each.



If necessary you can even specify multiple page ranges for selected PDFs. Say you want to remove/delete certain pages from a single PDF document then all you need to do is list the page ranges you wish to retain for that document.

Split PDF Documents



The Split tab doesn’t really give any options to choose from. It takes the PDF file and breaks into several single page documents. Period. If you’re looking for more flexible PDF spliter I recommend checking out PDF Merge and Split.

Watermark or Add Background to PDF Docs

Background / Stamp tab can be used to add a background or watermark (appears on top of the page) to a document. You can choose to apply it only to the first page or all pages in the document.



The only thing to keep in mind here is that both background and watremark image should be in PDF format.

Rotate PDF Pages

Rotate tab is another no-brainer. Choose the document, select rotation type and enter the range for pages that needs to be rotated.

Finally, regardless of what you actions you’re performing you have an option to make the output file
password protected and disable document copying and printing.

Did you use the PDFTK Builder before? What do you think abou it? Lets us know in comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Plus if you’re willing to donate a minimum of $1 to the developer, he’ll throw in the enhanced version of the software which will give you the ability to encrypt your files as well.

But for most people, including me, the basic free version will suffice. Let’s take a look at it and see how easy it is to split and merge your PDF documents. Let’s start with merging a file.

After installing the software, open it up and click on “merge / extract” on the left hand side. Then on the right hand side, click on “add”. This will allow you to add the PDF files you want to merge, to the program.

If there is a password for the PDF file, add it in the “password” column. If you only want certain pages from the file to be merged, put the page numbers in the “page selection” column (such as 1-5, 12, 14).

The next step is to complete this part :

As you can see, if the PDF file has forms, tick the box. Then indicate the folder where you want the newly merged file to go on your computer in the “destination output file” box. Then click the “run” button. Your merged file should then be made for you in less than a minute or so depending on the size of the files.

Now, to extract pages from a PDF file is also dead simple. Just go through the previous process again but this time, choose only one PDF file. Then in the page selection column, choose the pages you want to extract. Then press the “run” button. Your pages will be extracted as a single PDF file in literally seconds.

The third option is to take a PDF file and split it all the pages up :

You can also choose to give each new PDF file a prefix such as the name of the original file so you can keep track of which pages belong to which file.

All in all, this is a pretty powerful free tool and it gives you one more reason not to shell out the money for Adobe Acrobat. This is definately going in my “keeper” folder and I am contemplating giving a donation to the developer to try out the encryption feature.

[Rating=5]

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, professional freelance writer and the editor of Make Use Of. Check out his personal blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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What’s the one thing they have in common?

They all have downloadable PDF forms.

You want to join the gym? Here’s a PDF form for you to fill and you’re all set to go!
Would you like to study in our university? Fill in this PDF form and send it back to us.
You have to renew your passport? Here’s an application form for you.

How often have you had to download online forms in PDF format, print them to fill out, rescan and send them off? Such a hassle isn’t it? There’s a way to edit and fill in your application forms without printing them out.

Formulatepro allows you to overlay text and images on PDF documents so you can edit them on the fly, fill out your forms and send them off again. All within the time it takes to warm up your printer.

You can add text and as usual, you can customize its font, size and colour. You can also add shapes overlay (squares, circles) and scribbles (which is useful because then you can add your signature on the form).

One cool thing with formulatepro is the ability to add crosses. This comes in very handy as most forms have boxes to cross out. You can also overlay images onto the form, if you have a scanned image of your signature then it may be easier to insert rather than having to scribble it each time. You can also insert your photo if the form requires it.

formulatepro is very “online form” orientated. I guess it was built to help you fill in those forms, but don’t forget that you can edit just about any PDF document with it.

Saving as a PDF file is a little bit tricky. It’s not very straightforward because merely clicking on ‘Save’ will save the file as “.formulate” so it can’t be read by any other programs. Choosing ‘Print’ instead and on the following window click on ‘PDF’ and ‘Save as PDF’ will evidently save it as a PDF.

If you’re looking for a PDF editor with more features, Skim is a great application which will add “stickies” to your PDF, along with other shapes and can let you easily underline and strikeout text.

formulatepro and Skim are both free and are OS X only.

Do you have any favourite alternatives you’d like to share?

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time medical student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationships, studies and his future.

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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But as we all know, Adobe is not the only company offering PDF readers and writers. There is no question that better, free alternatives to the ever so (un)popular Adobe Acrobat Reader exist. One example is the Foxit Reader.

To be fair though, we have to recognize that Adobe’s Acrobat Reader has come a long way. It may appear slow because it comes with many great and some not so necessary features. On the other hand, some of the latest improvements show that developers don’t turn a blind eye to the competition and the latest trends. So if you prefer to use the original software – or for some reason have to – read on!

Earlier this month Adobe Reader 9 was released. In all honesty, it seems to load faster than ever. Looking at the new features overview that’s just what Adobe promises. Version 9 also supports swf and flv files, introduced as “Native Adobe Flash®” support, and allows working with Acrobat.com (beta). Here’s a list of all of its features.

Now let’s have a look at some of the things you can do to improve your PDF experience with Adobe Reader.

Since version 8 you can customize the toolbar, adding and removing tools as you need them. Go to >Tools, >Customize Toolbars… and check all the options you can’t live without.

Before:

After:

Also with version 8 came the possibility to include bookmarks, comments and attachments in the search, along with the option to search just the current document or all PDFs in a specific directory on your computer.

For enhanced reading you should know your shortcuts:

[Ctrl + Shift + H] activates automatic scrolling.
[Ctrl + H] puts the document into reading mode, omitting all tool- and navigation bars.
[Ctrl + L] toggles the full screen mode.
F8 removes just the toolbars.
F9 makes the menu bar disappear.

If you can’t keep your eyes open long enough to read a whole document, here’s a feature you will love. Since version 6 Adobe Reader has a built-in text-to-speech synthesizer called Read Out Loud. You will find it under >View >Read Out Loud. Admittedly, it’s very simple and there are much better text-to-speech tools out there. However, it’s already included, it works and doesn’t require any maintenance.

To keep your browser from freezing when opening a PDF document, you should disable the >display PDF in browser option under >Edit >Preferences >Internet.

Under >Preferences you can also disable the Splash Screen in the >General category >Application Startup section.

What makes using Adobe Acrobat Reader easier for you? If you’re not using it, which changes could convince you to return?

Tina is a regular MUO author. In her offline life she’s a PhD student interested in unraveling signaling events that determine cartilage and bone development.

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While I was searching for ebook reading softwares online, I came across Mobipocket which is a free ebook reader provided by the Mobipocket.com ebook store. It works only on Windows PC and also works on mobile phones like Smartphones, Blackberry and on devices like PDA.

I decided to download it and test it out and I should say that it’s certainly an impressive product. Once you download the 5.3 MB .msi file and install it on your PC, it searches for the available ebooks and creates your personal library. If you have your ebooks stored in a separate partition then you’ll have to manually import them.

When you go to the import option, you’ll find that it’s not just about ebooks but also about office documents, HTML and text documents. Hence this ebook reader aims to be a store of all your readable documents, which makes it more useful. While importing I’d suggest you to select the All Supported Files option and then import the required documents. It converts the document into the mobipocket format and stores it in a new folder named My ebooks created inside My Documents.

If you look at the left hand side column in this ebook reader, you’ve got options like ebooks, eNews, eBooks store, eNews store etc. The ebook store lets you buy ebooks from a number of online stores like mobipocket.com, fictionwise.com, the bookgap.com and many more. There is a Change Store Option on the top which lets you change the store at one click. The screenshot at the beginning of this post gives you a glance of the Mobipocket.com store.

One of the coolest features of this product is that it allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds of various online news magazines which include PC Mag, TIME, BBC News online, USA today and many more. You can also customize the display options to list view or newspaper view and have a better reading experience.

Although Mobipocket’s main task is to organize your digital text at one place so that you can easily read them and then send them to your mobile phone when required, it goes beyond just being an ebook and news reader and has many functions. You can customize the way you read ebooks, be it the font size, the layout, the background color, scrolling or the screen orientation. It also works for Microsoft Office files, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and RTF TXT files.

Furthermore, you can easily sync and transfer your digital text by connecting your blackberry, smartphone or PDA to your PC. It also lets you annotate, highlight or bookmark any part of the ebook and when you sync it with your mobile phone, the annotations get synced too ( see screenshot below ). And finally it has a cool dictionary search option which gives you a one click dictionary lookup in all the documents.

Overall, I found this tool to be very useful especially for ebook and RSS lovers like me. Those who travel a lot and love reading on their mobile phone would certainly appreciate this tool and it’s wonderful features. If you know of any other such ebook reader which you’ve been using and found very useful, then please do let us know in the comments section.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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But if we look it from the perspective of the site owner, giving the readers the ability to ‘PDF-print’ your pages will improve your site likeability by several points, and increase the site’s exposure to new readers.

We have discussed the RSS to PDF option using Feedbooks, but the service is limited to RSS feeds and feeds are sometimes only a fraction of the full articles. Moreover with this option, there’s nothing you can do but get ALL the feeds.

For website owners who still don’t offer an RSS option on their site (if any still exists today!) and/or wants to give their readers more freedom to PDF-print individual articles directly from the webpage, you can use the script from Web2PDF Online.

Here’s how:

1. Getting the code for ‘Save as PDF’

• Register at the Web2PDF Online Site
• Set the conversion options such as paper orientation and margin (in inches)
• Click the “Generate The Javascript” button.
• Copy the script provided in the next window

2. Using the code

Actually, all you have to do is paste the code into the HTML of the page where you want the “Save as PDF” button to appear. This could be a lot of work for those who want to put the button on all of their pages.

But Wordpress users can save time by using the code as a widget.

• From the admin panel, go to Design –> Widgets
• Find the Text widget on the left side of the Widget’s page and click “Add”
• The Text widget will appear on the right side of the page, below other widgets which already been activated before. Click “Edit”
• Give a title to this widget (or not), then paste the Javascript code on the body of the text.



• Click “Change” and then “Save Changes”
• You can drag and drop to these widgets to rearrange the order. But don’t forget to click “Save Changes” again afterwards.

From here on, your readers are able to print your web page(s) to PDF. Everytime they click the button, the page will be converted to PDF and a new window will appear showing a download link to the PDF file.

Do you know any other ways to offer your blog readers PDF functionality? Let us know what tools you offer in the comments.

(By) Jeffry Thurana is a blogaholic who has just started his own self-improvement journal “Supersubconscious” and manages an Indonesian tech blog “InterNeTips“. He actually thinks there are 30 hours everyday.

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If that’s the case, then this web service might be interesting for you. Feedbooks offers you the chance to turn a RSS feed into a PDF file, Cybook format, Sony Reader format or iLiad format. So if you are in a hurry to run out the door, you can turn the feed into a file, move it to your laptop or mobile device / PDA / e-book reader and read it on your way to work. Or perhaps you can read it in your lunch break – no internet connection required.

I was only able to test the PDF file format and it worked fine. The service is still in beta mode at the moment so there were a few bugs and kinks where things didn’t work so well (a couple of times, I got a corrupted PDF file which refused to open). But things worked OK in the end and the PDF file looked really good. This is obviously an online service still being worked out with the bugs being found and rooted out so you have to cut them some slack for that. But this is a service that should be bookmarked and continually checked on because it’s bound to get better and better. I can see myself really using this heavily in the future when I am sitting in a doctor’s waiting room.

For the user, you can make a Feedbooks profile and quickly subscribe to all the various feeds. You can then, with one mouse click, instantly make a downloadable PDF file (or one of the other file formats if you prefer) of that particular feed. You can also customize your PDF file with a particular font type and size, margin size and line spacing. So this is good if you have problems with your sight for example.

The only other downside I found is that obviously if the blog relies heavily on YouTube videos, external weblinks, photos hotlinked from another site (for example, Creative Commons photos on Flickr) and so forth, Feedbooks will not pick those up and show it on the file. It will only show what is physically on your domain. That seems to be my impression anyway.

Now for a website owner, this is a handy service to offer your subscribers. Feedbooks offers you a widget and a code snippet which you can put on your blog page and people can click on it to get your posts in PDF format. If a potential reader is too busy and too stressed to subscribe via RSS, they may be very grateful for this service and that may entice them to come back later. Result – one happy camper!

Just to repeat though – right now, Feedbooks is quite buggy. So check the files to see if they work OK and if not, keep trying. As time goes on, I am confident that the service will improve. So don’t give up on it.

Oh and the site is also working on bringing you the ability to export Sudoku puzzles to your mobile device. So that too is in the pipeline.

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, professional freelance writer and the editor of Make Use Of. Check out his personal blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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