Do not be misled by the program’s name – PDF24 Creator does much more than “creating PDF files”. Actually, the Windows version has been renamed PDF24 Toolbox, which says more accurately what it really is. This Swiss-army knife kind of tool offers 34 PDF-related utilities to all users at no cost. The program can be enjoyed either online or as a Windows standalone program, and it will let you perform tasks that are usually available only on costly PDF editors.
This excellent and versatile PDF macro tool offers a wide variety of utilities in one single software application. While most PDF editors ask for a usually fairly expensive fee, PDF24 Creator is available for free and in two versions – online and Windows-based. Both variants offer you the same functionality, which has been split into 34 buttons that will take you to 34 highly useful utilities. Surely, the program lacks some of the functionality that – for certain users and companies – makes professional PDF editors worth the fee, but for the average user, PDF24 Creator can easily become that perfect inexpensive solution they will ever need.
Each of the 34 buttons that appear on the main interface lead to a clear interface. They’re all different and alike at the same time, so that regardless of which tool we pick up we’ll always know how to go about its functionality without any help. Clearly, the standalone version mirrors its online counterpart when it comes to interface design, which has its pros and cons. Some of the dialog boxes look too big for a Windows program, and sometimes we’re forced to scroll down a bit to find a certain button. Also, if you happen to close the tool, you’re using instead of using the “Home” button at the top of the window, you’ll be closing the entire application inadvertently. Still, you just have to try two or three of its tools for a couple of times, and you’ll find out how easy it is to get used to it.
Without being exhaustive, I will mention but a few of the 34 utilities included in the program to show its amazing capabilities. PDF24 Creator or Toolbox comes with OCR capabilities, which means that you can scan a document as a PDF file or take an already existing scanned PDF and “extract” the text that appears there just as part of an image. You can also convert PDFs into various formats, including EPUB (right from this version) and different image file formats, and extract as independent files whatever images are in the PDF. Going quickly though some of its minor (yet always useful) utilities, you can merge, compress, edit (with restrictions), protect, unlock, split, rotate, sort, and compare PDF files, among others.
I invite you to discover and try the entire list of tools and utilities by yourself. You’ll surely be pleasantly surprised.
v8.2 [Jun 8, 2017]
Improvement: Print job name of print tool changed
The print tool in the assistant and the creator now uses the name of the printed file as print job name in Windows.
Improvement: Use the online converter if no PDF printer is installed
The DocTool now asks to use the online PDF converter in case that there is no PDF printer installed on your computer which can be used to convert to PDF.
Improvement: Scanner import tool can be disabled
The scanner import tool can now be disabled via the NoTwainImport (DWORD) option in the settings.
Improvement: Message if the PDF24 Windows service is not running
A message is now shown if the PDF24 Windows service is not started and if there is a pending print job in the printer queue of the PDF printer. The message says that this service is required and there is a button in the message to start the service.
BugFix: Cloud print error in assistant
The cloud print tool in the assistant resulted in an error and the tool could not be used. This is fixed.
BugFix: Rendering of buttons improved
Buttons were not rendered correctly if the Windows DPI scaling was used. We have fixed this issue and buttons looks good now on systems with standard 96 DPI and higher values.
