Recently I’ve had to run into a huge problem: I’ve had to fill in an online form, in PDF format, and submit it back online in, once more, PDF format. This was to re-apply for my school that I’m going to be going to in September so I can learn about databases for my second and last year of schooling. I thought this to be extremely foolish, and arse-backwards, seeing as I could also mail it in as well, but I wanted it there sooner then that. So I had to find ways to work around this PDF limitation.
The first thing I personally decided to do, was download a demo of a PDF editor, called Infix PDF Editor, which was linked to the forum a while back for review. Sadly, at that time, I did not do a review, so I was stuck using the trial which did the job well but saved a watermark on the output. Seeing as it was at the exact spot that I needed to put ‘ITDBAS’, I decided to keep looking for some good solutions. What follows are some free solutions that I used to get this working as planned.
One of the best solutions I came across came in the form of a PDF reader from a company I have already used before: Nuance PDF Reader. For those that have never heard of Nuance, they are the creators of Dragon Naturally Speaking, a brilliant program that converts speech to text. One of the nice things about Nuance’s PDF Reader is that it uses OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, which Raymond has talked about in the past. Personally, this leads me to believe, as well as in testing, that it is extremely powerful, especially for free of charge.
But for those that know me, know that I use Sumatra PDF Viewer, so to install a different PDF reader is rather foolish to me, even if it does have a killer option. So I tested two online options and was rather impressed to find that NitroPDF, a competitor to Adobe Reader, offered a free service to convert PDF-to-Word (DOC or RTF) format. It does require an email address for NitroPDF to send you the converted file, and the files are deleted off their servers shortly after you’ve downloaded it. Personally, I find it to be pretty slow, but it does do a great job, and considering the amount of traffic already headed it’s way, I’d take care in using it. It would be my second choice only to the option presented below.
My final option was another online converter, known as PDFOnline. Unlike NitroPDF’s version, you can upload directly to the service and have it convert, and provide you with the instant DOC format once it is done. It is impressively fast and allowed for me to convert the PDF to a format I could edit quickly, though it was also the dead of night when I tested it. So to say the least, it has it’s perks. I haven’t had any complaints with it yet, and I will be honest: I was rather surprised to see that it saved the tables fine for me to type into, for my registration form. With it’s help, I was able to send off my registration form for my second year and final of studying. Hopefully this information will come in handy for people in the future, because you never know when you have to edit a PDF file. I was actually asked recently about how to edit a PDF file for free via email, and for that patient reader, I say thank you for waiting, and I hope this resolves your issue!
– Nuance PDF Reader – (18.1mb)
– NitroPDF to Word – (requires email) –
– PDFOnline –