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Software Editorial / Windows Reviews / Office & Business / Nuance PDF Converter Professional
Think of PDF and you automatically think of Adobe. However there are a number of other companies who are challenging Adobe by releasing alternative packages. For example, Foxit do a lean and creditable, although limited set of PDF read and creation programs. Moving up a level we have companies such as Nuance who have released a program that is equivalent to Acrobat Professional. It has a very similar feature set but it also has an acceptable voice reader built in.

The main features are listed below.

Create PDF Files - Allows you to make PDF files from practically all of your Microsoft® Windows® applications, using File > Print or shortcut toolbars (when available.)  PDF files you create can be protected by passwords and can include watermarks. Compression and font settings give you control over PDF file size and appearance.
 
Edit PDF Files - You can edit pages and documents, annotate and review them, adjust document security, sign your documents. PDF documents can be compiled from different sources and pages can be rearranged. The program delivers a powerful document management system: use it to create archives from related documents to index and search them later.
 
Convert PDF Files - Lets you turn PDF files into fully-formatted Microsoft  Word, Microsoft Excel, Corel WordPerfect, and RTF files that you can edit. The program offers four types of conversions, resulting in standard documents, legal documents, forms or spreadsheets.
 
Create Fillable PDF Forms - Allows you to turn any PDF – even scanned PDF – into electronic forms that you can complete, save and route – completely online. You can add form elements to your PDF manually and also fill existing PDF forms that already have active form fields.


Listen to Your PDF - Only PDF Converter Professional allows you to “listen” to your PDF and turn a PDF into an audio file. Using Nuance® RealSpeak™, human-sounding synthesized speech is used to turn every word into a document you can hear and take with you – on your media player. I tried a wide variety of conversions, including Microsoft Word documents and .jpg images to PDF and was very impressed with the quality and accuracy of layout. The package feature is also very simple and precise.


In Conclusion


Converting from pdf to Word was also good, retaining tables, images, layout and headings. However, it did struggle a little with complex documents, although still producing a creditable end result.
I was extremely impressed with this program, with my only grip being that it is a little resource-hungry. However, it is no worse than Acrobat Professional. As this product is a fraction of the price of Acrobat Professional and has a similar feature set, in addition to deployment options in the Enterprise edition, I give Nuance PDF Converter Professional 5 a wholehearted recommendation.


Ease of use: 8/10
Performance: 6/10
Functionality: 9/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall : 8.25 / 10.00

The buttons used are icons created by www.everaldo.com and www.yellowicon.com  please note these icons have been modified. My personal thanks to Rodrigo for granting me authorisation for use on this site, please take a look at their websites as I believe they do outstanding work.

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