Of course, there are tools available which can help with these tasks, but most of them are paid and the ones that are free are not that efficient and leave the documents with ugly watermarks. That’s why when we come across a free software that’s like an all-in-one PDF tool without any caveats, we are bound to get ecstatic.
Advanced PDF Utilities is a wonderful Windows freeware which can help you with most of your PDF-related tasks. To be very frank, when I first used the tool it seemed this was the mother of all PDF management and conversion tools out there. So let’s install the tool and see it in action. The installation is pretty simple, just follow the onscreen instructions and finish the setup. After you successfully install the application, launch it. The application has a ribbon-like interface with each module dedicated to a panel in the ribbon. Let’s have a look at all the modules one by one.
PDF Preview
PDF preview can also be considered as a simple PDF reader. You can open and view any PDF file and do all kinds of tasks you perform on a normal PDF reader.
PDF to Image
PDF to image may give you an impression that it extracts the images from a PDF but that’s not what it does. This module converts and saves all the pages as a single image. You can select the range of the pages along with the image format and DPI quality. If you want to extract specific image from the page, you can use a free image cropping tool. Nice and easy.
PDF to Text
This module converts the PDF to text or Word Document. When you convert the document to text, the tool asks you for the directory where you want to save the converted text file. But when you try to convert the PDF to a Word Document, the tool directly coverts the documents and opens it up in Microsoft Word (provided it’s installed on your system).
PDF Merge
If you have to merge many PDFs into one, nothing can do it better than this tool. Open the module and import all the PDFs you want to merge as one. Make sure that the order of the files is correct. Having done that, click on the Merge button and specify the location where you want to save the merged PDF file. That’s all.
PDF Splitter
On the contrary, if you want to split a long PDF into smaller, individual files, load the PDF into the tool and mark the pages you want to split. Finally click on the button Split PDF and select the folder you want to save the files to.
Scan/JPEG to PDF
Using this module you can make a PDF out of images. The images can be imported from your hard disk, or it can be read using a scanner. After the PDF is ready, you can save it to your hard disk or send it to an online account directly.
OCR
You can save PDF as a text file instantly as long as it’s made up of text. If the PDF file was made up of several images, you cannot convert it to text directly. In these situations, you can use the Optical Character Recognition(OCR) technique to convert the images to text. I tried the tool on some of the PDFs I had on my disk, and it could read approximately 80% of the characters correctly.
Additional Tools
Using the additional tools you can save the PDF using a password or remove a password from an open PDF document. You can also apply digital signature before saving the document.
My Verdict
Seriously, it’s tough to digest the fact that Advanced PDF Utilities is a freeware. I mean, it provides pretty much all the basics tools one would require to manage PDF files and gives it for free without a catch like a watermark or other such similar marketing techniques. I give it five stars. What about you?
