FAQs

ABBYY^® PDF Transformer 3.0 is an easy-to-use yet powerful tool that quickly and accurately converts PDFs to editable and searchable formats, creates PDFs from within Microsoft^® Office applications and allows you to combine, modify and secure PDF documents. Based on ABBYY’s intelligent technologies, PDF Transformer ensures superior conversion accuracy and provides quality results in no time.

If you work with PDF files or use the PDF format to share information and you find yourself in one of the following situations, you can use PDF Transformer to be more productive:

1. You spend time retyping or cut-and-pasting PDF documents and want a more efficient way to extract content from PDF files so you can edit them.
2. You need to quickly convert documents, such as contracts or price lists, into PDF files so you can send them out as PDF attachments.
3. Your scanners can scan to PDF images and you want to make those files searchable. 
4. You need to optimize your archives of incoming PDFs by adding to them bates numbers and saving them with up to 10:1 compression 
5. Your want to make your document management process quicker and easier with multiple PDF conversion and creation
   

Yes. ABBYY offers a free trial version of PDF Transformer 3.0. The trial version contains all the features of the full-license version and you can try it risk-free for up to 15 days (starting from the first launch). During the trial period a total amount of 50 documents with export of no more than 2 pages at a time may be converted. All PDF files created in the Trial version of the program will have special trial stamps on each page.

All registered ABBYY customers are entitled to free technical support. Detailed information about technical support terms and conditions as well as contact list can be found at http://www.abbyy.com/support/

There are many new and enhanced features in PDF Transformer 3.0. The new version adds such professional functions for business users as stamps, bates stamping and redaction of sensitive information. It is also includes some technological improvements:

• ABBYY ADRT^® Technology allowing to convert PDF documents with original layout, style and formatting attributes, such as keeping headers, footers and page numberings in native MS formatting.
• New ABBYY MRC Technology which reduces the file size of PDF up to 10 times (depending upon the content of the document).
• ABBYY PDF Transformer supports 184 recognition languages including Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and Thai and provides an automatic detection of the document language (or several languages).

The program also allows multiple PDF conversion and creation – you can create PDF by combining several files from different MS Office applications and convert several PDFs simultaneously. In addition, ABBYY PDF Transformer provides more control over the conversion process with its new user-friendly interface.
To find more detailed description about all new features please, see What’s New page.

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. ABBYY PDF Transformer uses ABBYY’s OCR technologies for intelligent PDF files processing to ensure high conversion quality. OCR is also required to process PDFs with text in non-standard encoding and to convert PDF images created by scanners or MFPs into Microsoft Office documents or searchable PDF files. More about OCR.

ADRT^® (Adaptive Document Recognition Technology) is ABBYY’s breakthrough technology which reproduces the logical internal structure of an entire document. ADRT ensures higher quality retention of document layouts and makes OCR intelligent enough to deliver documents in native Microsoft Office document formatting. Thanks to ADRT technology, PDF Transformer 3.0 preserves original structure and layout of a document – headers and footers, page numbers, footnotes, fonts and font style, images/table/diagrams, links and hyperlinks. So you do not need to recreate all these elements and reformat the document after conversion.

ABBYY PDF Transformer is the optimal addition to ABBYY FineReader. While FineReader is a professional OCR program that provides professional conversion of scanned documents, digital camera images and PDF files, into editable formats, PDF Transformer will let you as well create new PDFs out of standard applications, adjust existing PDF files or combine them together.

Yes. PDF Transformer makes information from your PDF files available for editing in most modern office programs. Once converted to RTF (Rich Text Format), the document can be opened in any text processing application, including such programs as Word Perfect or OpenOffice.org. In addition, you are still able to save the conversion results in other formats supported by PDF Transformer like HTML or TXT. With PDF Transformer you can also create PDFs from any application that supports the Print function by using PDF-XChange 4.0 for ABBYY printer.

Screenshot Reader is a convenient “quick OCR” utility which is able to quickly capture screenshots and convert a screen images to text. It is a practical screenshot making tool that can as well extract short text parts, tables, or images from Web pages, flash presentations, Windows Explorer file menus, or error messages. Screenshot Reader is also helpful when you want to pull small quotes or a few sentences from a PDF or image file. Screenshot Reader is very popular and ABBYY sells it via online shop. If you register PDF Transformer 3.0 you receive this application as a bonus.

ABBYY PDF Transformer 3.0 can process any type of PDF files, including image only PDFs created by scanners or multifunction and all-in-one peripherals, and PDFs with non-standard encoding, tagged PDF, PDF/A.

ABBYY PDF Transformer 3.0 allows you to do both. You can scroll through the file before conversion and select desired pages. The product is also equipped with an area selection tool that identifies areas on a page and you can choose and adjust the areas needed.

The program follows security settings. You will need to enter the password in order to process password protected file. If the file is protected by a User password, and "content copying or extraction" is allowed, you may convert the PDF file after entering the User password. If "content copying or extraction" is not allowed, only the Author (Owner) of this PDF file can convert it, after entering the Author (Owner) password.

ABBYY PDF Transformer 3.0 includes an improved table reconstruction system and saves content in the same order and layout as they appear in the source file. This can be extremely helpful if you need to edit or correct in Excel financial documents available in PDF. The option “Ignore the text outside tables” allows saving just the tables without the surrounding text.

ABBYY PDF Transformer supports 184 languages, including English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Thai and many others. Moreover, ABBYY PDF Transformer supports multilingual PDF conversion and provides now an automatic detection of the appropriate document language (or several languages). Of course you can select the document language manually as well.

ABBYY PDF Transformer is integrated with Microsoft Outlook, and you can convert a PDF directly from Outlook. Click on Convert PDF toolbar button in Outlook and the PDF email attachment will open in the desired application, bypassing the download to Adobe Reader.

Existing PDFs can be adjusted using MRC compression technology. Mixed Raster Content (MRC) compression technology makes it possible to compress a file up to 10 times (depending on file content). MRC Technology is based on the image segmentation methods aimed to improve the size of the PDF file without lost of readability. During the decomposition of an image objects on a foreground and background planes are separated into different layers, and the most effective compression algorithm is used for each separate layer.

Convert your PDF to Searchable PDF and use Redaction Tool to remove all sensitive information from both text and image layers in PDF document. This means the redacted data, including metadata, are not only visually hidden or made illegible, but are actually deleted from the file and cannot be detected even by desktop search function.

All incoming documents can be stored in archives and identified later using unique marks in the documents – so called Bates stamps. You can state date and time, static text and bates numbers. In case of heavy workflow it is quite easy to find a necessary document via its own number among hundred thousand of other items stored in the same area.

Stamping is used to mark and identify documents with copyrights by putting a company name or legal copyright on them. PDF Transformer 3.0 allows you to add text in frame as a stamp on the page and choose its position and color while converting PDF to searchable PDF.

With ABBYY PDF Transformer 3.0, you will be able to create one PDF from several documents belonging to different Microsoft Office applications.

You can append any Microsoft Office document to any of your existing PDF documents. The necessary content will appear at the end of existing PDF file.

With ABBYY PDF Transformer 3.0 you can create PDF files directly from a Microsoft Word document, Excel table, PowerPoint presentation, Visio diagram. You can as well create PDFs from any application supporting the printing function by using the printer driver.

From Windows Explorer, simply right-click on the file and select “ABBYY PDF Transformer 3.0 -> Create PDF. To create PDF from a document that is currently open, click “Create PDF” from the embedded PDF Transformer toolbar in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Visio.

In Windows Explorer simply click on the document and select “Create PDF and e-mail”. The software will automatically launch your Outlook and open in new message with the created PDF attached. For a document that is currently open, you can do the same by clicking the “Create and e-mail PDF” button on the PDF Transformer toolbar embedded in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Visio.

When creating PDF directly from Microsoft Office applications you can set Open or Permission passwords in order to prevent unauthorized opening of documents or to restrict certain operations with created PDF file. Also you can select the size of the resulting PDF file depending on its further use and decide if you want to enable Bates Stamping to easily identify your documents later.

Use the “print-to-PDF” function, choosing PDF-XChange 4.0 for ABBYY printer in the Printer Name dialog box. In this case advanced options for PDF creation will be available, including customized paper size, flexible graphic compression options, font embedding settings, adding watermarks, overlay options and many others (see Properties for the PDF-XChange 4.0 for ABBYY printer in the Print dialog box).

When creating PDFs, ABBYY PDF Transformer 3.0 retains internal links and hyperlinks. This means that if your document contains a table of contents, footnotes or links to web sites, they will be replicated in the resulting PDF file.

Yes. You can create a PDF file using the PDF Transformer toolbar or from your PowerPoint presentation and then save it to disk or send it by e-mail right away. Use PDF-XChange 4.0 for ABBYY printer to save 2,3,4 slides per page or other presentation handouts in PDF format. By saving your presentation in PDF, you protect the content against changes as well as limit the resulting attachment size of your email if you want to forward it.

ABBYY PDF Transformer allows selecting among two output PDF sizes based on the different graphics resolution and compression options: “compressed PDF” and “non-compressed PDF”. You can choose one of the options depending on the purpose of the final PDF file.

Currently there are nine PDF versions: PDF 1.0-PDF 1.7 extended. These versions differ by support of various types of content and other features.
Several subsets of PDF format are standardized under ISO:

• PDF/A for long-term archiving
• PDF/X for the printing and graphic arts
• PDF/E for engineering drawings
• PDF/UA and tagged PDF for universal accessibility

PDF Transformer contains Adobe Acrobat PDF Library and will open any PDF version. On the creation side the product supports Acrobat versions 1.3-1.7. By default the created PDFs will have version 1.3 or 1.4 (depending on file content) to support maximal compatibility with other programs. If you wish to select another version, you can do it by selecting PDF-XChange 4.0 for ABBYY as your printer in Print functions and defining the version in Properties.

PDF/A is a file format for the long-term archiving of electronic documents so that created PDF files will be available for viewing and printing appropriately for years to come.

Searchable PDF is a PDF which contains searchable and selectable text. Text from searchable PDF files can be used during indexing, full-text search (including desktop search) and is also available for coping using Adobe Reader and other PDF viewers.