Convert your Documents into one Format

You have many different file formats on your computer. To name a few: jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp and png or rtf,txt,doc and pdf for instance. The big question that comes to my mind is why do we need that many formats. Most file formats offer no gain over the other, would not it make sense to convert all files of a certain type to one format only? It would improve compatibility and maybe reduce the number of programs that you need to have installed on your system to view them.

Omniformat can convert 75 different file types with the majority being graphic and document formats. I can think of one reason to convert documents to different formats: I sometimes download files that I'm not able to edit because they have been either created on a different operating system and my system does not support editing the file, or I simply do not have an editor at hand to edit the document.

This could be the most prominent reason for most users of omniformat but there are or course more. You can configure Omniformat to monitor a folder for documents to automatically convert matching documents into a selected format. This can be interesting if a step in a workflow requires a particular document format and you want to make sure that it is available automatically. You can alternatively use the folder to auto-convert file types by simply moving them into it. What is interesting is that you can use it to convert images to text using OCR.

Update: Mobile devices and gadgets have risen in popularity in recent time. While they are great when it comes to supporting standard formats, they often lack support for lesser used formats. This is another application that you can use Omniformat for. Just convert files on your computer to a format supported by your mobile or gadget to access the files on those devices as well.

The program is fully compatible with all versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system as of June 2012. It is however required to download and install PDF995 from the developer website before the program can be started. It is not clear why that requirement is in place.

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