Others. 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.
Best Free PDF Tools | Gizmo's Freeware. Introduction. 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.
Name Output file formats Digital signature Other features; Bullzip PDF Printer: PDF (PDF/A); PS; EPS; BMP; JPEG; PCX; PNG; TIFF: No: Append background or foreground. If you're looking for a free PDF tool, Nitro Reader is the one to get. All of the PDF writers in this review are programs that function by creating a pseudo printer on your system. When you want to create a PDF document from pretty much.
Best Free Pdf Printer Reviews
Those designed for a more specific task are grouped under Specific Tools. In a Hurry? В В Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide. В PDFill PDF Tools is my favorite with its. В nice,В clean user interface. В covering. В most В functions, including merge pdf files, split or reorder pages, rotate or crop pdf pages, add headers and footers complete with page numbers, etc. Watermarks can be added either by typing in some text (such as вЂDRAFT’ 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 Post.
Script file to PDF. Note that PDFill PDF Tools can be run from within PDFill PDF Editor, which is not free, but a seperate installer containing the Tools only is also provided by the developer. The. В PDFill PDF Tools does not support functions such as converting PDF to text, making annotations, etc., however, those features are all available in the. В Specific Tools listed in the next section. В Another free application PDF Shaper offers a different set of PDF tools which include Split and Merge PDFs, Encrypt and Decrypt PDF, Convert PDF to Image and vice versa, Extract Images from PDF, Rotate Pages or Sign PDF, Extract Text from PDF and Convert PDF to Word RTF. PDF Shaper lacks such tools such as adding watermark, adding header and footer, reorder pages, crop pages, adding PDF information, etc.
PDFill PDF Tools, but it has some other tools that PDFill PDF Tools does not have, such as Extract Text from PDF and Convert PDF to Word RTF. PDF Shaper sports a clean user interface and it's easy to use. However, the function of Convert PDF to Word RTF only did up to three pages of conversion and specifying pages for splitting PDFs encountered an error when tried. During installation of PDF Shaper, uncheck the option for bundling a toolbar or any other component which you do not need. В PDFTK Builder is a useful alternative. The big advantage of PDFTK Builder is that it can merge or reorder selected pages of PDF files at one go, which is much simpler if you have a lot to do.
- [Windows] Best free PDF creator (printer or converter) — Bullzip vs PrimoPDF vs 7-PDF vs PDFill vs PDF24.
- BullZip PDF Printer Standard adds a virtual printer to your Windows installation and uses it to generate PDF documents from any Windows app that supports printing.
- PDFs are one of the most common document formats. To read PDFs, you need a PDF reader. There are tons of PDF readers out there. What to know the best free.
PDFTK Builder. В 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.
В If your priority is to get the maximum number of features from a single freeware package, then. В j. PDF Tweak will be a good choice. However, its user interface is not as straightforward as in either of the two applications reviewed above. В Its merge, split and reorder functions are available under the вЂinput’ tab, and a new filename has to be entered in the вЂoutput’ tab.
This feature rich program. В allows you to rotate, watermark and format multiple pages. You can change page numbers and chapter bookmarks. And. В j. PDF Tweak also.
В offers encryption functions and. В lets you add attachments to PDF documents. Additionally,В j.
PDF Tweak enables you to set viewer preferences and document properties, including title, author, subject and keywords. В PDFsam (PDF Split and Merge) is well worth trying if you need to visually re- order or recompose multiple pages of PDF files.
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. The installer is bundled with an advertising program Open. Candy but you can get from here a standalone zip file with no such bundle.
В For Linux users,В PDF Shuffler. В should make it much easier for you to. В re- arrange pages in a pdf document, or merge and split pdf files. 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.
As a good alternative, try also PDF Mod for Linux. It has almost the same functionalities as PDF Shuffler but comes with a clearer PDF viewer and a slider to adjust zooming levels easily. Even though it lacks a feature for cropping select pages, you get more other goodies such as exporting images, adding bookmarks and editing properties including the title, author, keywords and subject of PDF files.
В The free applications reviewed in this section are helpful for their specific functions mostly not covered by the General Tools. Edit a PDF File. PDF Import for Apache Open.
Office (formerly Oracle PDF Import Extension) lets you create a hybrid pdf file with Open. Office 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 Open. Office Writer in 1. See this article A PDF File Allows Editing in 1. Layout Accuracy for details.
Able. Word, which is a capable word processor, can be used to open pdf file directly and edit small portions of text, add or remove images and so on before saving back to the pdf file. It's free for personal and even commercial use. Libre. Office or Open. Office Draw is also another free option available for such purpose. Convert PDF to Text. Some PDF to TXT Converter is a light tool which preserves text and layout while supporting drag and drop, batch conversion and encrypted pdf files.
Free. OCR. net is a. В good. В 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. Note: The online installer may offer third- party software during installation. Click the "Decline" button to reject the offer you may not need then the "next" button to continue with the setup. See Installer Warning) For an online OCR solution, try Free- OCR. Convert PDF to Word/Excel.
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. Convert Various Formats to PDF7- PDF Maker is a powerful tool to convert a wide range of formats to PDF. It can convert. В to PDFВ files generated by Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Libre. Office, Open. Office, Star. Office, Maths and Auto.
Cad, and will also convert images, text or web based files. The setup comes with a choice between a Command line version or Windows Explorer integration. If you are using office applications such as Libre. Office or Open. Office, 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.
В in the converted or exported PDF files,В along with the original page layouts. An alternative approach is to install a virtual PDF printer, such as Bullzip,В which will 'print' out PDF files of. В text or other contents. Note, however, that clickable hyperlinks and bookmarks will. В not. В usually be preserved in the resulting PDF file. If you only need to convert image files to PDF, my favorite would be.
 i. 2pdf. It works even better than the tool "Convert Images to PDF" included in PDFill PDF Tools. Download and unzip i. This program is portable and user friendly—just drag and drop the images on the program window, click the "Build PDF" button and it's done. When setting the page output, "paperless" format is a helpful option if you'd like to convert portrait or landscape images to the PDF file and view them on the screen without blank paper margins. How about converting files to PDF online? PDF Web Portal and some other websites such as Document Converter e. XPress.  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. It costs no money to use this application, but it is nagware which prompts a dialogue to ask for registration with payment each time you use it. Annotate PDF Documents. PDF- XChange Viewer. В 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.