Ultra PDF Merger is a simple handy program for the Windows operating system that can perform that operation. The program is offered as a free download on the developer website. Please note that it is supplied as a rar file which needs to be unpacked with a compatible software (like 7-zip). The program itself requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. It can be run without installation.

You find options to add and remove individual pdf documents in the program interface. A click on the Add button opens a file browser that displays all pdf files of the selected folder. You can then add one or multiple documents stored in that folder to the program queue. Each document is listed with its file name and path in the interface.

The move up and down buttons can be used to rearrange the document order which can be handy if you want to arrange them by date, name, alphabet or another sort order.

The Merge Files button opens a save window where the location and name of the merged document needs to be selected.

All documents currently in the queue are then merged in the selected order and saved under the new file name. Please note that you may need to run the program with elevated privileges as you may otherwise receive an error message when trying to save the new document.

Ultra PDF Merger is a handy program for Windows users who need to merge multiple pdf documents. The software can be downloaded from the developer website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft operating system.

Download the application: http://www.lotapps.com/free-pdf-to-text-converter.html

Now load PDF files and select documents from which to extract text. When loaded and selected, click “Convert PDF to Text for Free”.

After the conversion, a folder window will open containing the text file. Double-click on the file to view the text. It will look something like the screenshot below. All formatting will be gone and the text will span the entire screen.

In the next part of this article, we are going to take this a step further. This will explain batch file conversion to Docx, Doc, Rtf, Html, Txt, and PDF formats. What is interesting about this is that you can take the extracted text from the protected PDF documents as described above and convert those text documents back into unprotected PDF documents. It is an easy second step to restore the PDF formatting. This is not intended for illegal purposes. Please respect copyright laws.

Doxillion Document Converter

Free software that enables you to convert various formats of document files is a bonus. Doxillion Document Converter is efficient and easy to use. It can actually execute conversion operations outside of the user interface by integrating Windows’ right-click context menu feature. Files can be added to the user interface by drag and drop or by the Add Files button. Complete folders of documents can be converted as well as individual files and they can be converted interchangeably between formats. Supported formats included are docx, rtf, html, doc, txt, and PDF.

Download Doxillion Document Converter: http://www.nchsoftware.com/documentconvert/index.html

The download is fast and easy to set up. The program opens immediately. Drag and drop a document into the conversion field in the interface, select the format to convert the document to, highlight the document and click Convert.

This conversion was successful. Even though this was extracted text from a protected PDF file, it was converted to a complete PDF from a .txt file. The end result is that the original protected PDF is now unprotected and open. There are many things you can do with document conversion. Use these convenient tools and become a document ninja!

Govert’s Simple Imposition Tool is a free standalone software that can reformat pdf documents before printing. It is not only useful for users whose pdf readers cannot print multiple pages though, as it offers more than just that.

When you open the program for the first time, you notice a one-page layout where everything is configured. You load a pdf document at the top. The properties of the document are shown below, including the document’s size, pages and rotation.

Four formatting options and five optional settings are available under the Impose for section. You have the following formatting options:

• Booklet printing – Orders the pages automatically so that you get a booklet when you print and fold the printout. Optional foldmark can be added, which can be read by automatic folding machines.
• 2-up printing – Odd and even pages are printed side by side on one sheet of paper. Page Separation lines can be optionally added.
• Duplicate side-by-side – Print the same page twice on one sheet of paper. Cutmarks can be added to define where the document should be cut in half.
• 2x 1/2n – Places first half of multipage document side by side with second half. Duplex printing and cutmarks optional.

A click on the Action button launches a file save window where you can enter a name for the new pdf document. And that’s basically it.

If you compare the options to Adobe Reader, you notice that some are supported by Adobe’s product as well. You can use Adobe Reader to print multiple pages on one sheet and in booklet format. What’s not supported is the ability to print the same page multiple times on a sheet, and the option to place the first half of the document side by side with the second half.

The Simple Imposition Tool is available for Windows PCs. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. The program was tested under a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Professional. It worked without flaws.

The pdf software actually does a lot more than what has already been mentioned in the opening paragraph. Lets take a closer look at some of its features. The application can be started right after it has been downloaded and unpacked on the system.

It displays a number of tabs at the top that lead to various functions and options. The input and output tabs are the only mandatory tabs, everything else is option.

PDF documents are added in the input tab. Options are available to process only some pages of a document and not all of them.

The folder the new pdf document is saved to is defined in the output tab. It offers additional options, for instance to use better compression or optimize the pdf size.

The following processing options are available via other tabs:

• Page size: Option to rotate pages and scale ages to another page size, width and height.
• Watermark: Add a watermark to the newly created pdf document.
• Shuffle: Options to reverse the page order, display multiple pages on one resulting page or create a pdf booklet.
• Page numbers: Change the page numbers..
• Bookmarks: Change chapter bookmarks, options to import from PDF or CSV.
• Attachments: Add attachments to the pdf file.
• Interaction. Add page transitions and change viewer preferences (e.g. hide toolbar, menubar, direction or view area.
• Document info: Change document meta information like title, subject, keywords or author and creator.
• Encrypt / Sign: encrypt the pdf document with a password or sign it.

The interface of the application feels old fashioned, but that should not keep users away from the pdf manipulation software. JPDF Tweak offers solutions for many common pdf file editing tasks.

Users who are interested in the application can download it from the Sourceforge project page.

PDF Chain is a graphical front end for the PDF Toolkit which allows you to merge, split, watermark, rotate, add attachments to, and set permissions for existing PDF documents. And, best of all, it’s very easy to use so any level of user can take advantage of PDF Chain’s handy features. In this article I am going to show you how to install and use PDF Chain.

Installation

Naturally, since this is Linux, installation is simple. All you need to do is follow these easy steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software Utility.
2. Search for “pdf chain” (no qutoes).
3. Mark PDF Chain for installation.
4. Accept any dependencies necessary.
5. Click Apply to install.
6. Once the installation is complete, close the Add/Remove Software tool.

You are now ready to start manipulating your PDF documents.

Merging PDFs

Figure 1

Let’s first take a look at how to merge two (or more) PDF documents. To do this first open up PDF Chain by clicking Applications > Office > PDF Chain. When the application opens you will see a simple window with four tabs: Merge, Split, Background/Stamp, Attachaments. The tab you want for merging PDFs is, obviously, Merge (see Figure 1). Click on that to begin the process.

To merge PDF documents all you need to do is click the + button to add the PDF documents you want to merge. Move them up or down using the appropriate arrows. The order in which they appear in the Add window will be the order they are merged into. Once you have added all your PDFs you can select the ID for the merged PDF from the ID drop down. You can create a new ID or get the ID from one of the listed PDF documents.

When you have taken care of all of the set up, click the Save button, give the new document a name, and let the merging begin!

Splitting PDFs

Figure 2

The splitting process is very similar to the merging process. Now, understand what the splitting process does is split a multi-page PDF into single pages. So if you have a 20 page document you will wind up with 20 single page documents. You can then merge some of those together to make smaller documents.

To split a document, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Split tab (see Figure 2).
2. Click the Add button.
3. Navigate to the PDF you want to split.
4. Click the Save button.
5. Select the folder you want to save all of your PDFs to.
6. Click OK.

That’s it. You have now split that single PDF into multiple pages. NOTE: The count digits refer to the numbers for the saved file names. So if you have Sheet as a prefix and 3 counter digits the file names will look like:

• Sheet001.pdf
• Sheet002.pdf
• Sheet003.pdf
• etc.

Background/Stamp

Figure 2

Just like the merging and splitting, the background/stamping is just as easy. Say you want to watermark your name on the pages of a PDF you have created. To do this you have to have a pre-created watermark PDF for the process. Once you have that all you do is click the Background/Stamp tab (see Figure 3) and follow these steps:

1. Click Add to add the PDF you want to watermark.
2. Click add to add the PDF to be used for the watermark
3. Select if this is a background or a stamp.
4. Click Save.
5. Give the resulting PDF a name.
6. Click OK.

If you do create a watermark PDF, make sure the image has a certain level of opacity because PDF Chain does not add any opacity to your stamp.

Final thoughts

PDF Chain is a very handy tool to have around for anyone that has to work with PDF files. With this handy tool you don’t always have to have (or fire up) the tool you used to create the PDFs in order to handle simple actions such as merging or splitting. And don’t forget you can also add attachments to PDFs as well as edit the permissions of PDFs from PDF Chain as well.

OCR means optical character recognition which basically makes use of an algorithm to identify the characters displayed in the pdf file.

PDF OCR is a free software program for the Windows operating system that can turn pdf documents into editable text.

The interface is divided into two areas that are independent from each other. The first window loads the pdf document and displays its contents in its interface. All pages are displayed on the left and it is possible to read the pdf right on the screen.

The Start OCR button displays a configuration window for the OCR process. It is possible to OCR all pages, a selection of pages or only the current page.

The progress and status is displayed right in the window and all processed pages are displayed in the second window afterwards.

The PDF OCR Editor is a basic text editor that can theoretically be used to edit the text right away. The OCR process naturally misinterprets some of the characters which have to be edited afterwards.

The text editor can export the converted text as a text or doc document which indicates the second possibility of editing the text.

It usually makes sense to save the processed pdf as a doc and load it into a text processing application like Microsoft Word which offers spell and grammar checking.

PDF OCR is a convenient program that offers its users a fast and easy way of turning pdf documents into text. The program supports ten different languages and is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

A alternative is Free OCR Scanning which is an online service that can process pdf files among others.

But tabs are fortunately not the only new feature that has been introduced in Foxit Reader 2.3. The list of new functions in comparison to older versions of Foxit Reader is indeed impressive. The good news first, Foxit Reader is still starting blazingly fast. I was a bit worried about the multimedia player that was integrated in the pdf reader, this could be the first step to a bloated player. As of know this fear is not justified.

Among the new features are a magnifier, rulers & guides, automatic scrolling, font information, select all behavior with CTRL + A, a commenting text tool, bookmark design, callout and textbox tool and the option to print only portion of a page. The search can be moved into a separate window that floats above the contents. This is extremely nice if you need more screen space for the pdf document.

Foxit Reader 2.3 is a great new version of the popular pdf reader. It adds several new functions that are an improvement and some that might be interesting to users who do work with pdf documents all day.