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.
v11.9 [Dec 14, 2022]
- Reader: Startup time significantly improved: The startup performance has been improved significantly. This is especially noticeable when opening PDF files with many pages. In older versions, it can take a while before the first page is visible on the screen. In this version, the number of pages has little effect on the time it takes to display the first page. This makes it much more fun to work with PDF24 Reader. Compared to other PDF Readers, PDF24 Reader now does not have to hide when it comes to the startup time of larger files.
- Reader: PDF preview now also possible with 32-bit apps: We have created a new special PdfPreviewHandler.x86.dll which provides PDF preview for 32-bit applications. This special version of the dll is required for 32-bit applications to load the PDF preview. If you have installed e.g. Outlook x86 on your x64 system, then the preview in Outlook is now possible with the new DLL. During the installation this special DLL is registered in the WOW6432Node section of the Windows registry.
- Reader: Zoom tool "Adjust width and height" optimized: The "Adjust width and height" zoom tool has been optimized. When the horizontal scrollbar is visible, the height of the scrollbar must be taken into account, because in the "Adjust width and height" mode the scrollbars are not visible. Previously, the entire available area was not included in the calculation, so a margin remained at the bottom if the scrollbar was visible before.
- Reader: Too large info icon in the info bar is now smaller: DPI scaling was applied twice, so the icon in the info bar was too large. This problem is fixed.
- Creator: File name was partially not taken over: In the previous version there was a problem with the file name, which was not taken over when loading certain files. For example, if you loaded a Word file, it was given a generic name. The problem is fixed.
- Creator: UI rendering artifact issues fixed: In some cases, artifacts could appear in the UI during certain actions, which are unattractive from the user's point of view. We have investigated these cases and fixed problems. Furthermore, we have made further optimizations to provide a more responsive UI without artifacts.
- Creator: No more error message after canceling the password input dialog: When a password protected PDF is loaded, a dialog is displayed where the user can enter a password. This dialog can also be cancelled or closed. If this dialog is closed or canceled, then no further error message is displayed, because the user has already decided to cancel.
- DocTool: Office files are opened read-only for conversion: For the conversion of Office files we use the COM interface. Here the files are loaded and then exported as PDF. Here it is enough to open the Office files read-only, which we do now and which is also more secure.
- Toolbox: User fonts now visible in the toolbox: The fonts installed per user are now also visible in the Toolbox. These fonts are located in the folder %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Fonts.
- Toolbox: Fixed bug with fonts without name: Sometimes it can happen that fonts do not have a name. This has led to problems in the PDF24 Toolbox because this name is assumed. We have improved this. If the name is not available, then family name is now used as a fallback. This means that such fonts can now also be used.
- Allgemein: Signature problem with the mail function fixed: In version 11.8.0 the mail functions were optimized. However, this had led to the problem that the automatic signature in Outlook was no longer present in the mail. We have investigated this problem and changed the new functions so that the signature is now preserved.
- Common: Ghostscript now also sees the user font directory: The user font directory has been added to ghostscript's sFONTPATH argument, so Ghostscript is now able to find user fonts.
- Common: Fixed problem with shell command in PDF printer: A PDF printer can be configured to save automatically. Here you can also configure a shell command. We have fixed a bug here that prevented the command from being executed correctly if the command string contained quotes, but they are usually necessary due to spaces.
- Common: PDF printer backend optimized: Added a solution to the problem that the PDF printer did not work when either the backend user server or the print job has elevated permissions and the other does not. In this case the print job got stuck in the queue. We have now provided a solution for this problem so that this constellation no longer leads to a problem.
- Common: Core components further optimized: Some core components have been improved again to further increase speed and make some things faster.
- Common: Webview2 updated to version 108.0.1462.46.
- Common: QPDF updated to version 11.2.0.
- Common: Language files updated.
