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Best Free PDF Tools
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In a Hurry?
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 Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide |
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Introduction
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A PDF tool comes in handy when you need to deal with PDF files such as to merge or split pages, add a header, footer or watermark, highlight or annotate PDF documents, or convert from other files to PDFs or vice versa. In this review, multipurpose programs offering general features for merging PDF files, splitting or re-ordering pages, etc within a single application are discussed under General Tools. Those designed for a more specific task are grouped under Specific Tools.
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Watermarks can be added either by typing in some text (such as ‘DRAFT’ for documents to be reviewed), or by inserting a background image in PDF format. Some additional features are supported, such as encrypt and decrypt with security options; reformat multiple pages into one page; delete, flatten or list PDF form fields; convert PDF to images or vice versa; and convert a PostScript file to PDF. Note that PDFill PDF Tools comes bundled with PDFill PDF Editor, which is not free. However, you can run PDFill PDF Tools separately after installation. The free software part of the package does not support functions such as converting PDF to text, making annotations, etc. But those features are all available in the Specific Tools listed in the next section. |
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PDFTK Builder also supports split, rotate, background/stamp and encrypt features. Besides these, it has no other additional features. It's worth noting that PDFTK Builder lacks a basic function (available in PDFill PDF Tools) for watermarking PDF documents with background text—this can be important if you need to mark your documents as 'Confidential', 'Draft', etc. |
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This feature rich program allows you to rotate, watermark and format multiple pages. You can change page numbers and chapter bookmarks. And jPDF Tweak also offers encryption functions and lets you add attachments to PDF documents. Additionally, jPDF Tweak enables you to set viewer preferences and document properties, including title, author, subject and keywords. |
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You can mix, merge or extract, split and rotate pages by specifying the page numbers. However, PDFsam also lets you re-organize PDF pages in a thumbnail view. In this mode, you can easily work with thumbnails to merge, delete, rotate or re-order PDF pages and save the results as another PDF file. Since PDFsam is a Java application, it will run on any operating system that supports Java. The basic version of PDFsam is free for use, while the enhanced version is donationware. |
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After importing one or more pdf files to PDF Shuffler, the various pages appear as thumbnails, making it easy to merge, re-order or delete. You can right-click a thumbnail to rotate or crop a page before exporting to a new pdf file. PDFShuffler is a small application running on Linux. Some distros, such as Ubuntu, include PDF Shuffler in the repository for ease of download and setup. |
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The free applications reviewed in this section are helpful for their specific functions mostly not covered by the General Tools. Oracle PDF Import Extension (formerly Sun PDF Import Extension) allows you create a hybrid pdf file with LibreOffice or OpenOffice Writer. A hybrid pdf file is basically a pdf file containing an embedded odf source file. The beauty of this type of file is that not only can it be viewed with a normal PDF viewer, it can also be opened for full text editing with LibreOffice or OpenOffice Writer in 100% layout accuracy. See this article A PDF File Allows Editing in 100% Layout Accuracy for details. If you need to edit a normal or non-hybrid pdf file, LibreOffice or OpenOffice Draw is one of the free options available. You can use it to edit small portions of text, add or remove images and so on with no layout adjustments.
FreeOCR.net is a good scan and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program which lets you extract text from scanned PDF documents. Moreover, images from scanned PDF documents can be selected and placed on the clipboard. For an online OCR solution, try Free-OCR.com. Free online conversion is available from Nitro PDF for PDF-to-Word Converter and PDF-to-Excel Converter. Choose the file you need, click the "Convert" button and check your inbox for the converted files.
If you are using office applications such as LibreOffice or OpenOffice, or word processors such as Jarte, they come with a feature to export files to PDF. Newer versions of Microsoft Office also allow a free add-in for saving documents as PDF. Whether you choose to use 7-PDF Maker or any of these applications, you should find that clickable hyperlinks and bookmarks are nicely conserved in the converted or exported PDF files, along with the original page layouts. An alternative approach is to install a virtual PDF printer, such as Bullzip, which will 'print' out PDF files of text or other contents. Note, however, that clickable hyperlinks and bookmarks will not usually be preserved in the resulting PDF file.
How about converting files to PDF online? 7-PDF Web Portal and many other websites such as kool Converter or Document Converter eXPress also offer online conversion to PDF. Some PDF Images Extract is a good choice. You can extract all images from several PDF files by batch or pull images from selected pages in a PDF file. Images can be saved in jpg, bmp, png, tiff, gif or tga formats. PDF-XChange Viewer enables you to annotate PDF documents. It allows a variety of operations, including highlighting, crossing or underlining text; drawing shapes; stamping and filling out PDF forms with a built-in typewriter; insert, edit or rename bookmarks. Unfortunately some advanced features are available only to the paid-for Pro version. The good news is that now Foxit Reader has made this particular feature, together with most other basic annotating tools, available for free. If you're looking for an alternative, Foxit Reader is definitely a good choice. For Linux users, Okular is a good try. It supports annotations, highlighting, drawing lines and shapes, adding textboxes and stamps, and selecting and saving part of a document as text or in an image format.
Bookmarks can be easily renamed or edited. To set a bookmark to jump to a certain paragraph in a page—first browse to that paragraph, then right-click a bookmark, select "Set Destination" then "Replace Current". When completed, save the file as a new PDF file and it's all set. PDFescape is a helpful web application which lets you create or fill in PDF forms online, straight from your browser, In addition to creating and editing fillable forms, you can also add text, links and sticky notes, draw basic shapes, and whiteout contents. PDF Escape is now entirely free. If you want to save your work and return later you'll need to register. Briss is a cross-platform Java application which makes visual cropping of PDF pages much faster and easier. You just load a pdf file, draw one or more rectangles with a mouse to crop the regions you want from a page and then save them as another file. If you load a PDF file with multiple pages, you can see the odd and even numbered pages overlaid and crop them easily in one go. BeCyPDFMetaEdit is a good find. It allows you to edit most metadata such as title, subject and author of your PDF files, and customize viewer preferences, slide show page transitions, page labels, etc. Other than the GUI version, it also has a command version for batch processing with parameters explained in the help file supporting most of the application functionality. "Tweak PDF" is another choice with a simple user interface, but it lacks a slideshow setting and some other features. The program is portable and available for download at Portable Freeware. It has been scanned clean on VirusTotal. (NB: The link to the developer's homepage is not provided here as it has a bad WOT rating upon checking).
Note: You can easily create a PFX file with a free tool Make PFX by giving the Software Publishing Certificate (SPC) and Private Key (PVK) files and passwords. See also: How to create a self-signed certificate, Create self-signed X.509 certificates in a flash with Self-Cert. DiffPDF is a portable open-source application for you to compare two PDF files and see their differences in words, characters or appearance. To compare PDF files, select two different PDF documents via the File #1 and File #2 buttons then click Compare. You can also save your comparison result as a PDF file. The program runs on multi platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Try PDFCrak which runs on Linux or DOS (the version for DOS is available for download here). The only supported usage of this software is to recover passwords and/or content that you own but have lost access to as stated in the FAQ. Gimposition (or Govert's Simple Imposition Tool) allows you to re-order and reformat pages of your PDF document to prepare for booklet printing with a foldmark, 2-up printing with page separation lines, or place two equal copies side by side with cutmarks on a top page. No installation is required, just unzip the download, run the executable. It's straightforward, fast and easy to use. See also this review. To add attachments to a PDF, try "PDF Bundle" available for download at Softpedia. The program has been scanned clean on VirusTotal. (NB: The link to the developer's homepage is not provided here as it has a bad WOT rating upon checking). To compress a PDF file, try this portable application Free PDF Compressor (last free version 1.12), or follow this method mentioned in our Freeware Forum. |
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Others
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The following free applications offer particular functions, some of which are available in the main reviews. They were brought up in comments here or noted from other sources. I am listing them here with brief descriptions and links to the related sites for ease of reference.
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Have Your Say
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The software package requires Adobe Reader and GhostScript (10 MB).
This program supports user interface in English even though the website is currently only available in German.
The last free version is available at "FreewareFiles Mirror" from the above download link.
Portable version: http://portableapps.com/apps/office/pdftk_builder_portable
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Editor
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This article is maintained by volunteer editor Jojoyee. |
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Tags
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pdf tools, free pdf tools, freeware, edit pdf, pdf editor, convert pdf, encrypt pdf, pdf format, merge pdf, split pdf, pdf slideshow |
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Comments
I'm using doPDF v7 right now.
No need to download java or ghost.
It's doing fine for me =)
Hi,
I searching for a free program that will compress existing PDF files without losing quality. Can you suggest one? I tried re-saving the PDF using PDFill PDF Tools but that didn't change the file size. Then used that to split the pages, dropped them into PrimoPDF which saved each page into much smaller PDF files, then re-merged them using PDFill but though my default PDF reader is Foxit Reader (I also got the editor) and when that opens the new PDF file, which is much smaller in size, but shows it has lost a lot of quality/resolution. I tried changing the settings I could on PrimoPDF but don't know how to change it in Foxit or PDFill. I even tried to compress the PDF using a website with a PDF compression tool, but that didn't work either; waited over 1/2 an hour and at the end just got an error report. Anyway, was unable to get a smaller PDF without loss of quality using those program, so would appreciate if someone could recommend another PDF program that would work to compress the PDF without too much loss of quality.
Thanks,
Sonia
I found 7-PDF Maker is quite a good tool. Thanks for the info.
Steve
Have you tried Free PDF Compressor or the method mentioned here? It depends on the acceptance level, if a pdf file contains very high resolution pictures, you would be able to compress them to a lower but acceptable level and save it in a smaller file size.
You're welcome Steve.
The PDF to text conversion of Foxit PDF Reader is very good, just choose "save as" and then "txt" as the file format. I believe its conversion is better than many other tools available.
Jojoyee: I tried to edit a PDF file in Windows 7 SP1 using Open Office 3.3 with the Oracle PDF Import Extension. After exporting the selected file, OO writer opened, but to a blank page. How can I get this to work? Thanks, David
I gave it a try and it worked for me. You might want to check out more details and some steps described in this article David.
Thanks for the reply; is my problem how I tried to run the program? I first opened Open Office Writer; went to File as PDF Export; checked Hybrid option and Export; browsed to the pdf file I wanted to edit, gave it a unique name and hit Save. OO writer opened to a blank page. Any thoughts? David
Thanks for your sharing and explanation :)
PDFescape is an online editing facility that works just fine. Used it once so far; easy processing; recommend it.
Hey... i have been looking for something like this... Great great explanation... :)
7-PDF Maker is not free, to register it costs 11,95 euro (including tax/VAT)
You might want to check again Obhund if you're using the portable version otherwise it's freeware.
Hi, i´ve been trying to convert a pdf file to excel, it´s 67 pages and the trial versions just let me convert 5 pages or less, i need a program to convert all of it even if i have to select every page ( that works whit one program that i used yesterday but just let me convert 47 pages not bad huh) but i have to convert another pdf file like i said of 67 pages, the pdftoexcel online doen´st works i don´t know it is beacause of the size of mi file, give me a suggestion please i need it for work!!
Best regards from Mexico
8a
Correction: The "portable" program version of 7-PDF Maker is not free; the installer version on 7-PDF Maker (7p10.exe) is totally FREEWARE!
Some good software never get a release. They are mostly from universities for benefit of colleagues and studentsand public not built for selling. For example TeXnic was used ten years as alpha version.
Anyone ever come across a free converter to PDF/A format?
I have an ebook I downloaded which is a series of HTML files. Any way to convert this to one PDF without converting each individual html?
In truth, while not billed as such, I think the best PDF creating/editing tools I have found so far are OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice.
There are addons that allow them to behave more like PDF processors. But the ability to totally process the document any way I want, then save it out as a PDF file is excellent.
Their inability to read in the PDF file for editing is the MAJOR drawback. Even with the PDF addon, the results are not good. If they could read in PDF Files with no issues, I think LibreOffice would be just about perfect. It reads in all major formats, including being able to tell apart WordPerfect and Works documents. I have been using LibreOffice for a few months now to build newsletters, and send them out as PDFs.
The two "some pdf" tools (converting pdf to text or to word documents) have two problems as far as I have discovered. First they require you to agree to download IE as well (!) and secondly they can't be installed because they continue to offer an alert box which says that you must connect to the internet (which I most definitely was having just that moment downloaded the setup file from the internet)!
Did anoyone try this new tool to crop pdf files? www.pdfscissors.com
I am looking for a program that will allow me to overlay one pdf over another (construction drawings). I have managed to do this previously in Photoshop, but it's a bit clunky and isn't exactly ideal. Any ideas?
Is anyone knows a Free PDF program which convert an entire Website to PDF?
Hi,thanks for great website and quite wide range of different PDF tools and apps here.
I see that some people met with the same issue I've been struggling for a couple days.Tried to compress big .pdf file, tried to do it with a virtual printer and saving, not too much use, maybe I just not a master in lots of different settings over there.
Then with two extra programs and quite quickly I managed to reduce my original downloaded .pdf file from 330MB to 32MB. Chopped off almost 90%!
So, 1st - I used STDU Viewer to export .pdf document as images, use 300DPI resolution(or play around to get desired outcome);
then, 2nd - used FastStone Image Viewer, in "Create" menu "Multi-Page File Builder" set PDF format, desired resolution etc, press OK - and enjoy!
All that would take for you only 3-5 minutes, if you're already worry:). And it's working.
I found 2 of the "Some PDF" software to be useless and by that I mean they did not do as promised. Secondly, they put you thru unnecessary hoops to get to download the product and the online help page had nothing to offer as well. If anyone has another image extract freeware, I'm listening??
just to clarify what was wrong with this product. "Some PDF image extractor" performs the image creation from a certain pdf file with no user input other than the filename thus the user is left with a software guesswork immage file which in 4 tries always came out incomplete (missing some text or similar parts). User is not even allowed to choose the .jpg output filename. I want to be able to select and crop the image file myself
There are two ways text can be represented in a pdf file.
In the more useful files, text is present as actual text, i.e. strings of letters that can be easily extracted and put into txt or doc or html files. You can recognize these simply by double-clicking on a word in the file... if the word is highlighted, you have this type of pdf file. There are dozens of text extraction programs that can manage this; Acrobat Reader itself has a "save as text" option that will do this for you.
The less useful form of pdf has only an image of a page of text ... it's like a fax or photo of the page, rather than a string of characters. Double-clicking on a word in this sort of pdf doesn't highlight it, because it's not a word -- it's just a bunch of pixels on your screen. If you run a text extraction program on one of these, you'll get a blank page as output. To convert an image to text, you need an OCR (optical character recognition) program that can recognize each individual letter in the image, and then string them together into words and sentences based on the position of the letters on the page, as your brain does whenever you read something. OCR programs are large, sophisticated pieces of software, loaded with language rules, font patterns, and dictionaries to help them distinguish "m" from "rn", O from 0, I from l from 1, identify kerned letters, and so on. They're very difficult to write and develop, and good ones can cost $100 or more.
Tom, if you just want the images, get PrimoPDF / NitroPDF reader software. This can extract text separately from images. I just spent hours creating a word document, printed it to PDF, closed the word doc and it was gone ... was ready to scream. Then tried some of these various downloads ... (had same result with SomePDF ... images not so great, no text at all from a 10 page doc!!) ... when back to NitroPDF and just extracted the text and images (separately), and ... all things are well again ... I can recreate the word doc from the text, then repaste the images.
HTH,
Suzanne
You mentioned that Libre/Open Office with the Oracle extension "unfortunately it doesn't automatically adjust the layout for you". Of course this is a shortcoming, but this is due to the nature of PDF files in general. They don't have adjustable layouts. Otherwise they wouldn't be portable from platform to platform and printer to printer. Even the exorbitantly priced Adobe Acrobat editor can't adjust the layout.