I was alerted to another FREE online conversion service: PDF online.
I gave it a shot and tested it with a 35 page file (similar to the big one I mentioned earlier on).
Here are my test results:
Impressive speed - uploading and downloading obviously depend on your broadband speed (I’m on 8MB, well, nominally…)
Conversion takes a moment. But hey, 35 pages and a little wait beat what I did manually with this file a couple of months ago (the job still isn’t finished).
Saving to disk as a Word file takes the longest of all the tasks. You simply have to wait. A minute or two.
Accuracy - this is the biggie. I’m afraid, the product I recommend earlier on, Able2Doc, beats it by quite a margin.
Here is why: Take the copyright symbol as an example. It wasn’t picked up correctly even once by PDF online, while it posed no problem for my favourite software, Able2Doc. As the copyright symbol is on every page in my document, this was a niggle since, in this case, it was replaced by a few different symbols which means I had to verify and run “Search and Replace” several times. (Tip: In the end, I copied the correct version into the footer and deleted the line wholesale.)
There were also other inaccuracies, but this was to be expected in such a job.
VERDICT: For a FREE service, PDF online beats the other free service I mentioned in speed and convenience hands down. If you have relatively short documents, it’s simply Great Stuff. However, if you want to reduce your proof reading load, use Able2Doc
Tags: pdf, pdf conversion, Software, Word