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What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 08:28
by 9fingers
As some of you might of read, I am making the huge leap from Win XP to W10 home soon.

Other than familiarity, one of the things that has kept me flogging away with XP is a number of bits of software that I also like and use regularly but are 32bit and intolerant of OS higher than XP.

One approach might be if W10 has some sort of XP emulation mode but I fear that the change from 32 to 64 bit might scupper that, so I'm looking for some replacement programmes

My most regularly used is Adobe Acrobat 6.0 which is a full PDF manipulation programme

I often want to take multiple PDF documents and concatenate them into a single document. Must have!
Also but less often I extract the PDF text into word. very useful.
Finally adding and removal of watermarks - but this is a "luxury need"

I know pdf readers are common but what freeware do you use for pdf creation with these features please.

Thanks
Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 09:18
by greeno
Microsoft word will load and convert pdfs top doc format.

You can also save as pdf in word/ power point. As such you only need a pdf reader now. All the advanced features are bundled into office.

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 09:23
by 9fingers
greeno wrote:Microsoft word will load and convert pdfs top doc format.

You can also save as pdf in word/ power point. As such you only need a pdf reader now. All the advanced features are bundled into office.


OK thanks but will word concatenate pdf files without having to manipulate them within word?

Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 09:26
by RogerS
I use this one

PDFelement for Mac :lol:

Haven't tried merging with it though.

Seriously, they do a Windoze one

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 09:37
by 9fingers
RogerS wrote:I use this one

PDFelement for Mac :lol:

Haven't tried merging with it though.

Seriously, they do a Windoze one


Thanks Roger. Seems to get good reviews and claims to merge.

Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 10:00
by Andyp
Roger, you can merge or concatenate pdf files in Preview. Just open all the PDfs you want to merge then print and save as PDF.

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 10:06
by 9fingers
Andyp wrote:Roger, you can merge or concatenate pdf files in Preview. Just open all the PDfs you want to merge then print and save as PDF.


Is Preview a Mcfeature Andy?

Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 10:09
by RogerS
Andyp wrote:Roger, you can merge or concatenate pdf files in Preview. Just open all the PDfs you want to merge then print and save as PDF.


Oooh...neat, Andy :eusa-clap:

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 10:10
by RogerS
9fingers wrote:
Andyp wrote:Roger, you can merge or concatenate pdf files in Preview. Just open all the PDfs you want to merge then print and save as PDF.


Is Preview a Mcfeature Andy?

Bob


Yup. A bloody versatile program. You can manage many many different types of files...images even.

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2019, 12:17
by Woodster
You can manipulate and add/remove pages of a PDF on a Mac with its own built in software. It’s very easy. PDF was built into Mac OSX from the start.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202945

Adobe Acrobat is a good package but expensive the last time I looked. I used it at work quite a bit.
Free so called PDF “writers” for PC’s are rubbish from what I’ve seen of them and can often only handle a limited number of fonts.

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 07 Sep 2019, 03:01
by kirkpoore1
I use Paint.net for messing with pictures. Simple interface, does what I want, isn't from Microsoft. The one thing I have a problem with is that it wants to fill the paper when I print, instead of letting me specify the size and printing it out. I pull the images into Word for that.

Kirk

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 08 Sep 2019, 19:18
by williams1185
if you want a site for freeware of all types try major geeks they test everything , ian

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 08 Sep 2019, 22:13
by 9fingers
williams1185 wrote:if you want a site for freeware of all types try major geeks they test everything , ian


Thanks Ian.
I've already found one thing there to try.

Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 08 Sep 2019, 22:23
by 9fingers
9fingers wrote:
RogerS wrote:I use this one

PDFelement for Mac :lol:

Haven't tried merging with it though.

Seriously, they do a Windoze one


Thanks Roger. Seems to get good reviews and claims to merge.

Bob

Just downloaded PDFelements. I could not find a tool to sort the input docs prior to merging. It might mean you have to open the the documents in the final desired order?
Yes it does a merge but plasters the result with watermarks unless you pay their ransom, so that has got the boot.
Currently experimenting with PDF Split and Merge 2.1

Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 09 Sep 2019, 10:56
by Andyp
Bob, Have just managed to merge pages from two different PDFs using Libre Office. Obviously I have the Mac version but I guess it woiuld the same in Windoze.

I can also edit test of a PDF in Libreoffice.

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 09 Sep 2019, 11:10
by Rod
I don’t know if it was Win7 or 10 but if you bought the professional version (which I didn’t!!) it came with an XP emulator.

I lost the use of an expensive bit of kit and software by not being savvy enough.

One thing you’ll find with 10 is that it keeps updating itself.
Windows Defender is worth activating.

Rod

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 09 Sep 2019, 11:20
by 9fingers
Rod wrote:I don’t know if it was Win7 or 10 but if you bought the professional version (which I didn’t!!) it came with an XP emulator.

I lost the use of an expensive bit of kit and software by not being savvy enough.

One thing you’ll find with 10 is that it keeps updating itself.
Windows Defender is worth activating.

Rod


Windows Defender is on - at least for now whilst I feel my way around
Its Win10 Home and I'm trying to avoid running an XP emulator and bring myself up to date.
I've been told that 32bit software should run on 64 bit machines - something I did not expect so will have a go at loading some old favoured software and see how it goes.
Must be some minor lifetime crisis as I've also made the leap from ios9 to ios12 on my phone last week :lol:

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 09 Sep 2019, 12:44
by Woodster
Our main piece of freeware used is Open Office. It’s does everything we need of it. I used to really like Microsoft Word up until about fifteen years ago but Microsoft overdeveloped it and then the security weaknesses popped their heads up. Word perfect was also a good package at the time.

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 03 Sep 2020, 09:36
by 9fingers
Just to add a further option to this thread.
I came across PDFSAM (pdf split and merge) freeware - suits my budget and it seems to do what it says on the can and seems happy with Win10

https://pdfsam.org/

Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 03 Sep 2020, 13:05
by Phil
I recently merged 12 Home Owners Levy PDF invoices into on to submit to SARS (Tax)

Just did a search "Combine PDF files" and found an online converter.

Reading the thread there are good suggestions 8-)

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 03 Sep 2020, 13:37
by Woodster
Being in charge of Reprographics at my last job I was often asked about stuff like word processing etc. The company would get complaints from customers from time to time because the documents emailed to them were at best badly laid out or at worst almost unintelligible. A asked what on Earth they were sending and it turned out to be Microsoft Office files, primarily Word. Right from the start I told them not to send proprietary files like Word but it fell on deaf ears. Eventually after about a year or so and many more complaints they took my advice and only sent PDF files - problem solved. Many years ago I was lucky enough to be invited to a free Adobe Acrobat seminar held at Apple’s offices near Heathrow and I was amazed at some of the things that Acrobat can do. It’s such a shame it’s so expensive. Having used several different packages it’s surprising how different the final PDF document can be.

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 03 Sep 2020, 13:54
by 9fingers
Phil, I found a free online combiner last night allowing two free jobs per 24hrs which would suit most casual users.
I have a very small limited company and once a year in September, I have to bundle up documentation to send off to the accountants. I'd be a bit concerned about sending that lot off to an online service on privacy grounds.
I might be being paranoid as the resulting accounts have to be publicly available on Companies house website for anyone to see :?

This morning I have used PDFSAM to combine 55 documents into a single pdf as well as some lesser combinations and the program has worked very well so I'm quite pleased with it so far.

Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 03 Sep 2020, 14:01
by 9fingers
Woodster wrote:Being in charge of Reprographics at my last job I was often asked about stuff like word processing etc. The company would get complaints from customers from time to time because the documents emailed to them were at best badly laid out or at worst almost unintelligible. A asked what on Earth they were sending and it turned out to be Microsoft Office files, primarily Word. Right from the start I told them not to send proprietary files like Word but it fell on deaf ears. Eventually after about a year or so and many more complaints they took my advice and only sent PDF files - problem solved. Many years ago I was lucky enough to be invited to a free Adobe Acrobat seminar held at Apple’s offices near Heathrow and I was amazed at some of the things that Acrobat can do. It’s such a shame it’s so expensive. Having used several different packages it’s surprising how different the final PDF document can be.


I looked at merge feature of Acrobat DC last night. I have the free version buillt into Win 10 and there were two subscription options to do what I need and they were £10 and £15 per MONTH to subscribe to which is just out of the question for a small company like mine. They may well be a whole host of other feature for that money but merging is all I need. Adobe are just taking the pi88!
As per my previous post PDFSAM is working well for my end of FY needs

Bob

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 03 Sep 2020, 14:22
by TrimTheKing
Office Lens app for iPhone (and others I imagine). Just get all your docs together, photograph each page, choose PDF as the output and the app does it for you. Documents merged, no fannying around (unless your docs are already PDF'd I guess), and it saves the output to a number of locations of your choosing.

EDIT : just changed the typo of Office Len to Office Lens.

Re: What freeware do you use?

PostPosted: 03 Sep 2020, 14:52
by Robert
Back to the original Q. Going through my start menu looking for free programs that I use (none of which involve PDfs :) )

Bulk Rename utility is a program with so many renaming options and you get to see the new name before you agree to it. Mainly i rename video clips to get them in date and time taken order just by file name. Change characters in the name, add digits, use exif the list goes on.

Calibre E-book management Kind of a must have if you read ebooks and want to share them or convert them for other e reader formats.

Filezilla Straightforward FTP program for uploads etc a bit more demanding than adding a network place in File explorer can cope with.

MakeMKV no link as I don't use it often and mine has expired - search google. This software will rip Blu-rays and DVDs to hard disc if you have a personal video library server. It is permanently in beta and to use it you have to look on their forum for the current beta key (or you did last time I used it). Worth the effort as it does a good job and nothing seems to stop it.

Plex Media playing software. You have a server program that runs in the background and use clients on devices to play what is on the server as well as some borderline naff content provided by Plex themselves. Free version has some restrictions but you can do a lot for nothing. I have the paid version though and all our music, photos and home videos are available through it as well as other features like backing up our phone pictures.

Then there is Sketchup, Fusion 360 and MS Synctoy of course. MP3Tag sorts out the embedded tags in music files.

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows FREE is probably the most important free software I use. It can backup a complete computer and restore to the same or different hardware. All our computers use it and backup to a NAS running FreeNas. I have tested it extensively and it has never let me down. If say I fit a bigger drive in a laptop i just use the backup (and restore boot media Veeam makes for you) to restore to the new blank drive in the laptop then extend the partition in windows.