BIOS: Technology Means Business

ABBY’s PDF Transformer Pro 2.0 (£49.99 ex. VAT) is a low-cost but relatively powerful PDF solution, combining both PDF conversion and PDF creation capabilities. Ideal for small businesses not needed the full collaboration and editing features of Adobe’s market-leading Acrobat Professional 8.0 (£395 ex. VAT), PDF Transformer Pro 2.0 lets you convert PDFs into editable files such as Word or Excel, as well as create PDFs directly from Microsoft Office applications. Additionally, it can transform image PDFs into searchable PDF files quickly and easily.

If you work with PDF files or use the PDF format to share information, PDF Transformer Pro 2.0 will help you be more productive by providing a more efficient way to extract content from PDF files so you can edit them. It also lets you quickly convert document, such as contracts and invoices, into PDF files so you can send them out as PDF attachments. Another neat feature is the way you can create searchable PDF images from your scanner.

PDF Transformer Pro 2.0 combines both PDF conversion and PDF creation functionalities in one product, unlike the majority of other low-cost PDF utilities. When converting PDFs, the software not only captures text, but also retains document layout and table structure, so you don’t need to spend time reformatting documents - thanks to the company’s powerful built-in optical character recognition (OCR) technology.

The PDF conversion component of the software further allows quick and easy conversion of all types of PDF files (from image only PDFs to files with special encoded fonts or complex formatting) to a variety of editable formats including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, TXT, and HTML, allowing you to reuse the information or make changes. The main differences between PDF Transformer Pro 2.0 and its entry-level sibling, PDF Transformer 1.0 (£34.95 ex. VAT), are that the former adds two primary functions - creating PDF files and direct conversion of PDF files to searchable PDFs. In addition, PDF Transformer Pro 2.0 provides more control over the conversion process with its new-and-improved user interface.

The product’s intuitive, viewer-style interface is flexible and easy to use. It is instructive and provides the ability to choose the level of control needed in the PDF conversion process, depending on user preferences, file formatting complexity, or its use purposes. You may look through a PDF file before converting it and change the settings if necessary. You can also select a specific page or zone within the PDF file to process and set up the level of layout retention needed. PDF Conversion options are easily accessible, without requiring navigation through many different windows and dialog boxes to select conversion requirements.

PDF Transformer creates PDF files directly from Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations or Visio diagrams using toolbar buttons embedded in the applications. You can save the PDF file or send it by e-mail without first saving the PDF. The Create PDF functions are easily accessible from applications with the PDF Transformer toolbar or Windows Explorer. You may also create PDFs from other applications that support the ‘Print’ function.

ABBYY PDF Transformer 2.0 Pro supports PDF security settings and allows you to produce your PDF document with permissions passwords to prevent the unauthorised opening of documents or to restrict certain operations including printing, content extraction, editing, adding comments and adding or removing pages. The utility retains internal links and hyperlinks when creating PDFs as well as automatically keeps document properties, including title, author, subject, and keywords in the created PDF file. The PDF creation interface also allows you to specify the size of the resulting PDF files depending upon use.

PDF Transformer 2.0 Pro delivers noteworthy accuracy with PDF file conversion using its dual-option approach. When processing PDF files, the utility determines if the text is embedded, examines the integrity of the text layer and makes a decision to extract the text or apply optical character recognition (OCR). Each area is examined individually, and the most appropriate method is applied to each area of the document to achieve the best possible results.

When processing PDF files, the utility captures and re-creates internal links and hyperlinks as well as retains document properties including titles, subject, author and key words and saves this information in Microsoft Word, Excel, HTML and searchable PDF formats. In addition, PDF Transformer 2.0 Pro converts documents in 37 languages, supporting conversion of multilingual documents, and provides paper size and image quality retention.

With an intuitive interface familiar to anyone working with PDFs, and an optimal set of functions, PDF Transformer Pro 2.0 should fit organically into your work environment. Most tasks can be accomplished in one or two clicks using only the default options, and when tweaking is required all the commonly-used settings are present in a single control panel. Further options allow you to alter paper sizes, resolutions, compression types, downsampling options, watermarks, bookmarks, overlays and much more.

In our tests the conversion quality of Office documents to PDF was very good, with few formatting errors or missing layout elements. We were also impressed by the software’s ability to decipher text and data. When we transformed PDFs of text-heavy pages into Word documents, the text required no further editing. Graphics, images and page formatting sometimes needed a little work, but this shouldn’t be an issue if the source is a memo or table of data. OCR capabilities, as expected, are superb. Overall, PDF Transformer Pro 2.0 a sound choice if you haven’t got the budget or need for Adobe’s Acrobat suite. [7.5]

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