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.
v8.7 [Nov 14, 2018]
- Info window added to sidebar in PDF Reader: The sidebar in PDF24 Reader has been given an info window that displays general information, security information, document info information, metadata information and fonts for the opened PDF. With it we deliver a feature which is gladly seen and which we also gladly use.
- Sidebar in PDF Reader now uses icons instead of tabs: The sidebar in PDF24 Reader no longer uses tabs, but icons, similar to Adobe Reader. These are more flexible and we can use much more elements in the sidebar than before. A new element has already been mentioned above and more elements will follow here to make the PDF24 Reader even better.
- The openwithprogids registry entry can be disabled by flag: Since version 8.7.0 the PDF24 Creator contains a slim PDF Reader. The installer registers this reader in Windows. For this an openwithprogids entry is added to the file type PDF. This entry can now be suppressed by a flag on the command line. With the EXE installation program this is achieved by the argument /NoAddOpenWithProgIds. For the MSI package you have to use the statement ADDOPENWITHPROGIDS=NO.
- Adobe Reader no longer displays PDF24 signature: Adobe Reader no longer displayed the signature created with PDF24, although it was correct. This version fixes the problem and the signature is visible again.
- Length of font map names reduced: The length of fontmap names must not exceed 100 characters in Ghostscript, otherwise errors will occur. The fontmap generator has been adapted accordingly so that only fonts with a shorter name are included.
- PDF Printer Assistant was not always started in the foreground: The PDF printer assistant was partially not started in the foreground in the last version. We have added another statement to bring the wizard to the foreground.
- Delivery of Ghostscript 9.26: Ghostscript 9.26 is recommended by the Ghostscript creators, because there are security problems in the previous versions, which will be fixed with version 9.26. Since we always pay attention to security, we now deliver this version.
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