PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It’s one of the most commonly used and accepted formats for documents today. It has a standard that ensures that a PDF document created on one computer will display the same on any other computers.
Because PDF is so widely used there is literally hundreds of programs available that do certain things with it. Some are free some are pretty pricey. I’m concentrating here on the ones that are free or inexpensive, of course.
The first thing that is important to understand is that the PDF format was not designed to be an easily editable document. It’s main purpose is to provide a document that looks and prints the same across all machines and systems.
So most PDF files are documentations, books or copies of documents that are meant to be read and not modified.
PDF Readers
It follows then that the most used piece of software that handles PDF files are the PDF readers. These software are always free, fortunately. Adobe Acrobat Reader is THE standard for PDF readers – simply because Adobe holds the rights to the PDF standards. Another notable PDF reader is Foxit Reader which has the advantage of being about third of the size of Adobe’s Reader and therefore loads faster.
Scanning to PDFs
Another big use of PDFs is the digital copies of documents. The big advantage here is that a PDF file can contain all the pages of a document in a single file, as opposed to having each page stored in a separate picture file.
Most scanners and scanning capable all-in-one printers come with software that can create PDFs from scanned documents. If it doesn’t then you can give a try to a little program called Scan2PDF (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/scan2pdf.html) which is a free software but it has some kinks and it can throw some error messages in German :-) ). But if you just do a Google search for “Scan to PDF” you’ll see a lot of other software solutions. Unfortunately, we haven’t tested any other yet so I don’t know which one is good to use.
Another concepts that are good to know in relation to scanning documents are: OCR and Searchable PDFs. Let me define these.
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It simply means that the computer converts a picture of a typed page into its text equivalent. When a page is scanned in the page is represented as a bunch of small dots. In a picture format a document cannot be searched or its data extracted or used. The OCR pores through the page and recognizes the individual characters on it and saves the text from it. It then can be saved as a text document, edited, searched, etc.
A searchable PDF is a PDF file of a scanned document which has an OCR process ran through, so it contains not only the picture of each page but the text itself as well. In a searchable PDF you can highligh (select) the text, copy and paste it into another software – and most importantly you can search inside the document for words and phrases.
PDF Forms
Yet another very useful application of PDF files are form. These are specially constructed PDF documents that have boxes where you can enter data. You can find such forms on the IRS website, or on the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) website.
Now, PDF readers allow you to fill out these forms and print them out. They don’t always allow you to save them but based on my latest testing, Adobe Reader 9.3 (most recent one) and Foxit Reader 2.3.3309 (an older version) allows you to save it. I also tested NitroPDF reader for this but it failed miserably at this so I can’t recommend it.
Being able to save a filled out PDF form comes very handy if you, let’s say, need to resubmit some papers but need to make some changes, or need to fill out several forms with very similar data (for example something for each of your children).
Converting From and To PDF
To convert a PDF file to another format you will either need to use a software, or use some online conversion site (if you don’t mind submitting your PDF file over the internet). Here’s one site that might be of use to many: http://www.anypdftools.com – here you can submit your PDF file and turn it into a Microsoft Word document, which you can edit easily afterward. As far as software goes, I didn’t find one yet that I tested and could recommend.
Converting to PDF is actually, in most cases, is a pretty easy process. All you need is a little program called PDF printer. It acts like a printer but instead of creating paper sheets it makes a PDF file of what would normally go to the printer. I actually wrote a whole article on it: http://www.computerwizardindy.com/what-is-a-pdf-printer-how-can-i-create-pdf-files/
Modifying PDFs
In order to be able to modify PDFs you’ll need to pay some money for a software. Adobe has some hefty license fees ($300-$450) for their Standard and Pro edition of Acrobat – which allows you to create, or change PDF documents. A less expensive, free alternative is AnyBizSoft PDF to Word converter (www.anypdftools.com) which gives you pretty much the same features but cost much less ($99). You can even download the software and run it as a trial for 14 days before deciding on it.
Problem With Opening PDF files
This little article contains just the basic things about PDFs. Considerably more can be said about them and a lot of information is available online if you do some searching around.
I hope some of the tips here will be of use to the readers!
Because PDF is so widely used there is literally hundreds of programs available that do certain things with it. Some are free some are pretty pricey. I’m concentrating here on the ones that are free or inexpensive, of course.
The first thing that is important to understand is that the PDF format was not designed to be an easily editable document. It’s main purpose is to provide a document that looks and prints the same across all machines and systems.
So most PDF files are documentations, books or copies of documents that are meant to be read and not modified.
PDF Readers
It follows then that the most used piece of software that handles PDF files are the PDF readers. These software are always free, fortunately. Adobe Acrobat Reader is THE standard for PDF readers – simply because Adobe holds the rights to the PDF standards. Another notable PDF reader is Foxit Reader which has the advantage of being about third of the size of Adobe’s Reader and therefore loads faster.
Scanning to PDFs
Another big use of PDFs is the digital copies of documents. The big advantage here is that a PDF file can contain all the pages of a document in a single file, as opposed to having each page stored in a separate picture file.
Most scanners and scanning capable all-in-one printers come with software that can create PDFs from scanned documents. If it doesn’t then you can give a try to a little program called Scan2PDF (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/scan2pdf.html) which is a free software but it has some kinks and it can throw some error messages in German :-) ). But if you just do a Google search for “Scan to PDF” you’ll see a lot of other software solutions. Unfortunately, we haven’t tested any other yet so I don’t know which one is good to use.
Another concepts that are good to know in relation to scanning documents are: OCR and Searchable PDFs. Let me define these.
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It simply means that the computer converts a picture of a typed page into its text equivalent. When a page is scanned in the page is represented as a bunch of small dots. In a picture format a document cannot be searched or its data extracted or used. The OCR pores through the page and recognizes the individual characters on it and saves the text from it. It then can be saved as a text document, edited, searched, etc.
A searchable PDF is a PDF file of a scanned document which has an OCR process ran through, so it contains not only the picture of each page but the text itself as well. In a searchable PDF you can highligh (select) the text, copy and paste it into another software – and most importantly you can search inside the document for words and phrases.
PDF Forms
Yet another very useful application of PDF files are form. These are specially constructed PDF documents that have boxes where you can enter data. You can find such forms on the IRS website, or on the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) website.
Now, PDF readers allow you to fill out these forms and print them out. They don’t always allow you to save them but based on my latest testing, Adobe Reader 9.3 (most recent one) and Foxit Reader 2.3.3309 (an older version) allows you to save it. I also tested NitroPDF reader for this but it failed miserably at this so I can’t recommend it.
Being able to save a filled out PDF form comes very handy if you, let’s say, need to resubmit some papers but need to make some changes, or need to fill out several forms with very similar data (for example something for each of your children).
Converting From and To PDF
To convert a PDF file to another format you will either need to use a software, or use some online conversion site (if you don’t mind submitting your PDF file over the internet). Here’s one site that might be of use to many: http://www.anypdftools.com – here you can submit your PDF file and turn it into a Microsoft Word document, which you can edit easily afterward. As far as software goes, I didn’t find one yet that I tested and could recommend.
Converting to PDF is actually, in most cases, is a pretty easy process. All you need is a little program called PDF printer. It acts like a printer but instead of creating paper sheets it makes a PDF file of what would normally go to the printer. I actually wrote a whole article on it: http://www.computerwizardindy.com/what-is-a-pdf-printer-how-can-i-create-pdf-files/
Modifying PDFs
In order to be able to modify PDFs you’ll need to pay some money for a software. Adobe has some hefty license fees ($300-$450) for their Standard and Pro edition of Acrobat – which allows you to create, or change PDF documents. A less expensive, free alternative is AnyBizSoft PDF to Word converter (www.anypdftools.com) which gives you pretty much the same features but cost much less ($99). You can even download the software and run it as a trial for 14 days before deciding on it.
Now, if you just need to extract some pages from PDF documents then you can do that for free by simply opening up the PDF file in a PDF reader and then printing the needed pages to a PDF printer. It’s workable on most cases except for when you need to keep links and form information on those pages. In those cases you’d need to above mentioned software to get the job done.
Reuse template in PDF files
Trying to get some fantastic templates downloaded, but they are in PDF files. Now you can try PDF to PowerPoint Converter, this PDF to PPT software is the first converter in the whole world, it It preserves the original text content, images, layouts and hyperlinks after conversion, efficient and accurate. You can also batch convert up to 200 PDF files at a time. With it, you can easily take what you want in a PDF file.
Problem With Opening PDF files
More than 90% of the time the problem of opening PDF files comes from a corrupted PDF reader, or sometimes from incorrect file association settings (wrong program is used to open a PDF file, such as Microsoft Word, etc). And these can be really easily remedied by downloading and re-installing your choice of PDF reader, or fixing the file association (the ‘Open With’ option when you right click on a PDF file).
SummaryThis little article contains just the basic things about PDFs. Considerably more can be said about them and a lot of information is available online if you do some searching around.
I hope some of the tips here will be of use to the readers!
Recent Comments