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LibreOffice LibreOffice is a handy package that comes with 6 easy-to-use applications for you to use at your office or at home, whether you are a professional or a beginner. You will be able to complete your office tasks by creating professional presentations and diagrams, building database files, displaying scientific equations, etc.
You can install this program in two ways: choosing the "Typical" installation where you will get all main components on your computer, or using the "Custom" one which allows you to select and install only the tools you need. Therefore, if you opt for a custom install, you will definitely save some time and space on your hard drive.
The interface is simple and fully customizable. You can easily add or delete entries from the menus, annex commands within the toolbar and assign actions to any event.
You will find this suite very useful due to the fact that with its powerful utilities you can easily write/edit texts, build diagrams and multimedia presentations, display mathematical equations or you can create a database file.
This software comes with a neat PDF creator, which allows you to easily build a presentation from scratch (or using an available template) or open an existing one and edit it. You will be able to choose from thousands of backgrounds, add effects to slide transitions, select an output medium (original, screen, slide,etc.) and many other actions.
An advantage of using this package, besides its handy tools, is the fact that it is free for you to use as long as you want.
Briefly, it's surely worth trying LibreOffice, an advanced and powerful suite that will help you simplify your office tasks.
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Apache OpenOffice.org Sun has developed a software for those in need of something similar to Microsoft Office. As part of a growing open source and free software community, it brings to us this suite office with GPL license.
Let me explain, GPL means that you can use the software as you wish, share it with your friends, modify the program and whatever you want, without paying any fee. Besides that you don't have to pay to use it, the suite has a very complete office tool set with all the programs you have in Microsoft office and almost all the functions you find in every program.
Usually I use three, Calc (same as Excel) Impress (same as Powerpoint) and Writer (same as Word).You don't feel the difference. Just a few functions present in Microsoft programs are not present in OpenOffice.org programs. Like insert a link to an image, or some rare statistic functions.
Despite all of this, all the openOffice.org programs take advantage from the fact that if you need to export some document to pdf format, you need additional tools to do that. With one click you can have your document in pdf format in seconds.
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Foxit Reader Foxit Reader lets you view and edit PDF documents. Therefore, more than just a reader, this application is also a PDF editor. Fortunately, the program now allows creating PDFs from scratch.
Besides, it is compatible with all PDF formats, including the latest versions.
The application has an intuitive interface with a very neat design. The use of ribbons allows inexperienced users to have access to the basic features without having to deal with the most complicated ones. However, if you prefer the old-fashioned toolbars, you may also set the program to display them instead. Besides, you can fully customize the program’s appearance because it comes with various skins to select from. Luckily, the interface is available in multiple languages. Finally, advanced users can benefit from using the application from the command line as well.
Foxit Reader supports a large number of PDF-related features. First, it allows organizing your documents with the help of layers and bookmarks. Moreover, it allows inserting comments and stamps. It also lets you insert multimedia objects, such as audio and video. If the document contains forms, it also allows filling them. Other useful features are taking snapshots and reading pages using the system’s text-to-speech engine.
In terms of protection, the application allows restricting operations, such as editing, printing or copying PDF documents. Besides saving your documents to a location on disk, the program supports sharing them by e-mail, on the Cloud (Evernote) and on social networks (Facebook). Fortunately, you can also expand this set of features by installing plug-ins.
In general, Foxit Reader is one of the most complete applications related to viewing and editing portable documents. It has the main advantage of being lighter and less expensive than Acrobat Reader. However, I should tell you that, before you decide to buy this application, you should also consider that there are free programs to view PDF documents. Moreover, Microsoft Word supports saving documents in PDF format, with the advantage of being much easier to use.
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PDFCreator As its name says, PDFCreator allows you to create a PDF document from any other printable file. As long as that file can be printed, it can also be converted to a PDF using this neat and handy application.
One of the most important advantages provided by this application is the fact that it can convert printable files such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets or text files not only to PDF documents, but also to other formats such as Postscript (PS), Encapsulated Postscript (EPS), and image files like PNG, JPEG, BMP, PCX or PSD. While most virtual PDF printers can create only PDF files from printable files, PDFCreator can also create other types of files.
Another thing that I like a lot about this tool is its comprehensive package of PDF security functions and settings that let you block the editing and printing of the created documents, password-protect the documents, encrypt them using the powerful 128-bit AES algorithm or digitally sign them. You can also control the size, quality and other parameters of the output file with ease, providing a lot of thorough options. Furthermore, PDFCreator is easy-to-use, neat and intuitive, providing a simple and clear interface.
In an end note, PDFCreator is one of the best tools to create PDF documents from printable files, being both feature-rich and free.
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doPDF doPDF lets you quickly create PDF documents from any printable file, including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, plain text files, or even images. It installs itself as a virtual printer on your system, therefore all you need to do in order to convert files to PDF documents is select the “Print” function and then choose the doPDF virtual printer from the list of available printers.
It also comes with a simple and straightforward interface that allows for selecting and converting files to PDF without opening them first and selecting the “Print” command. This handy additional interface is an important benefit of this virtual printer, as it can save you a lot of precious time when converting the files. Furthermore, most other virtual printers don’t offer any additional options of converting the files.
Another remarkable advantage of this nice tool is the fact that it’s free. Despite that, it still offers cool additional features and options such as the possibility to select a predefined page size for the resulting PDF file. You can also choose to create high quality PDF files, more suitable for printing, or smaller files which are a better fit for Web publishing, as you prefer, and you can also choose to keep bookmarks and links from MS Office documents to the output PDF after the conversion.
To sum it all up, though it’s free, doPDF is also one of the nicest and handiest PDF virtual printers you can find. It’s easy-to-use, and it gets its job done as intended, without flaws or errors.
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Microsoft Office Word Viewer Word Viewer lets you view, print and copy Word documents on a computer that does not have Word installed. This download is a replacement for Word Viewer 2003 and all previous Word Viewer versions.
The Word Viewer, together with the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats, allows you open Word documents saved in the following formats: Word Document (.docx), Word Macro-Enabled Document (.docm), Rich Text Format (.rtf), Text (.txt).
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PrimoPDF PrimoPDF is a tool for converting any kind of document to PDF format when what you need is that the file should be printable. PrimoPDF is a tool compatible with most of the windows operating systems including XP, 2000 server along with Vista operating system.
Howerver, PrimoPDF needs to have .net 2 framework on the machine to operate. PrimoPDF supports more than 300 file formats for converting them to PDF format, including HTML, word, XLS, Image files and many others. Though the free version has limited features, it is still enough for using it for basic PDF conversion.
With PrimoPDF users can also secure their PDF files with password along with adding various document data like Author, Title etc., during conversion. PrimoPDF is also able to take two different PDF files and then merge them in one single PDF file. PrimoPDF confirms PDF 1.4 and 1.5 type of PDF formats during the conversion. PrimoPDF's installer is very quick and also free from any type of Addwares and SpyWares. PrimoPDF converted files are also free from any type of watermarks.
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Bullzip PDF Printer Bullzip PDF Printer installs a virtual printer on your Windows system that you can use to create PDF documents from any printable document or file. The program enables you to create PDF files from your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, presentations, text files, drawings or any other file you can print.
Besides, you can also use this tool to create image files from you printable documents.
To use the program you just need to open your source document/file and “print” it using Bullzip PDF as the printer. Then, a window will open to allow you select your desired output format and settings. Among the available formats you can choose from you will find PDF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others. Moreover, you can configure the output file name, the output quality, the initial zoom level and the compatibility level of your resulting PDF file.
Bullzip PDF Printer also offers you some other advanced possibilities. For example, you can add text watermarks to your output files or merge them with other existing PDF files, and even select the insertion position.
The security settings are also present in Bullzip PDF Printer. You can use them to set the owner and user passwords, the key length, and various permissions for your output PDF file. In case you selected an image output format rather than PDF, you can also configure the horizontal and vertical resolutions, the text alpha bits and the graphical alpha bits.
Finally, the program also offers you an Options dialog that opens on a new window for you to configure the default values for all the parameters mentioned above and many others. This window includes additional sections, like "Dialogs", "Signature", "Actions", "Run", etc.
In conclusion, I would say that Bullzip PDF Printer is one of the most complete and advanced tools to convert any document into PDF or into various image file formats. This tool is compatible with all Windows versions available, and you can use it for free for personal and non-commercial purposes.
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Adobe Reader In nearly 20 years of its existence the PDF file format has become a staple on the majority of computers in the world. Its importance in document sharing grew from almost naught up to being the de facto standard on the Web.
And the PDF software of choice for the most users has been and will be for a very long time par excellence Adobe Reader.
The current Adobe Reader 10.1 is no huge leap ahead in comparison with the previous releases. The most accurate description of it would be 'good old Reader'. However, it features a number of important changes involving mostly the commercially available features. So, now, using the Export PDF service, you can export your .pdf documents into .doc or .rtf format. However, this feature doesn't come for free: in order to enjoy converting the documents into an editable format, you'll have to fork out US$19.99, whereas there's a great chance that you'll find a nice freeware converter around.
Another important new feature that has been introduced recently is commentary adding that comes in two variants: sticky notes and text highlighting. Both of them will not shake the foundations of your ideas about software as they're practically identical to the corresponding features we're used to see in text editors like Word or LibreOffice.
The overall scarceness of really useful features in the free version is actually the greatest drawback of Adobe Reader. For example, unless you have acquired a yearly US$99.99 subscription, you won't have access to creating new PDF files. This strips Adobe Reader much of the efficiency it would have in our eyes if not for these exorbitant subscription fees. With so many alternative PDF-reading and converting applications around, it would be really hard for Adobe to keep up the competition.
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STDU Viewer STDU Viewer is a powerful image viewer for Windows. It is delivered on a freeware basis. It is available for direct download from the developer’s website. When installing, we can associate the following file extensions: TIF, TIFF, DjV, DjVu, PDF, and TXT with STDU Viewer.
It has been designed to help active readers of files with pdf, tiff, and djvu extensions as it provides a free browser and viewer for these files. We can easily navigate through the document and go to the first, previous, next, last or specific page. It is possible to save a copy, print, export, zoom, adjust width/page, rotate, and many more.
This software has been enhanced and now it offers new capabilities. 1. Browse any document with txt format. 2. Text layers can be exported into text file. 3.Access the content of a specific page by selecting the thumbnail with the page number. 4. Export a page of document to image formats, such as bmp, jpg, gif). It runs under Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista operating systems.
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WinDjView This application is a solution for opening DjVu files, a format created as an alternative to PDF. Though less frequently encountered, this type of format comes with a new image compression technology that allows you to save text, drawings, and images in small size files. With a higher compression than that provided by JPEG, GIF, and PDF formats, DjVu files are perfect for website uploading, as well as for storing complex graphics in less space.
As I already mentioned, WinDjView is designed for viewing the content of such files. For this, the program comes with a simple and intuitive interface. The appearance is actually dull and unimpressive, but you can't ask too much from a file viewer. The tool provides basic viewing options, such as page rotation and zooming. Furthermore, the pages can be displayed with a continuous layout or facing each other. If your DjVu file contains both text and images, and your intention is to view only the written content, then you may choose to turn the pictures into black and white - this way, you can concentrate your attention on the text.
In addition, this program acts as a document converter. In this regard, you have the ability to save the DjVu files as BMP, GIF, PNG, or JPEG files, so that you can use the resulting files with Windows' most supported programs. The software lets you perform a series of editing operations, like adding annotations to highlight important fragments, bookmarking selected pages, or extracting passages as new files.
All in all, this app provides an easy solution for inspecting the content of DjVu files. Thanks to the thumbnails-like previewing option, you can navigate through multiple pages and stop on the one you are looking for.
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