Targeted at business users, PDF Converter Professional 3 enables users to convert static forms to fillable forms and adds new conversion options for Excel and WordPerfect.ScanSoft recently updated its PDF conversion and editing tool with more conversion options and new features for editing and form-filling.
PDF Converter Professional 3, which is available now, includes several key enhancements to the previous versions, such as the ability to convert a static PDF form into an electronically fillable form and the ability to convert PDFs into Microsoft Excel and Corel WordPerfect documents.
ScanSoft Inc. of Burlington, Mass., is promoting the $99 PDF Converter Professional 3 as a low-priced alternative to Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat, designed for the business office.
"While graphics professionals and select power users can rationalize the cost and complexity of traditional PDF solutions such as Adobe Acrobat, ScanSoft PDF Converter Professional 3 is the first PDF application designed and priced specifically for every business user," a company press release states.
Acrobat 7.0 Standard is priced at $299, and Acrobat 7.0 Professional at $449.
Click here to read about another $99 alternative to Acrobat.
As with earlier versions, users can also convert PDFs to Microsoft Word documents that retain formats and are fully editable. ScanSoft's senior vice president of marketing and product strategy, Robert Weideman, said that capability is critical for office use, because it enables users to easily make Word documents from PDFs with all the elements intact.
The application also includes ScanSoft's PDFCreate tool, which can create PDFs from most applications, with support for passwords and encryption, as well as editing, sticky notes and highlighting. The created PDFs are compatible with Adobe Reader.
New in this version is the FormTyper feature, which converts PDFs into fillable forms that can be filled in on a computer, rather than just printed out and filled in by hand. Weideman said ScanSoft has drawn on its expertise in character recognition to enable FormTyper to recognize form elements, such as fillable areas and check boxes, and transform them.
Users of any earlier version of PDF Converter Professional can upgrade to Version 3 for $79.
