PDF24 Creator Changelog

What's new in PDF24 Creator 11.17.0

Mar 6, 2024

Toolbox: Place watermark in the background:
The watermark tool has received a new option that allows you to place a watermark in the background. This is better for some documents than putting the watermark over the content. If the watermark is placed under the content, it may happen that the watermark is not visible because it is hidden by the content. Therefore, a watermark overlaying the content is the preferred option.
Toolbox: Improved command line option functionality:
The -processJob command line option, which allows you to control the Toolbox functions on the command line, deleted all output files after the Toolbox process ended. This meant that the results could no longer be accessed. This has been improved. Output files are now excluded from automatic file deletion when the process exits.
Toolbox: Webview2 updated to version 122.0.2365.66
Updater: Added link to release notes:
A link to the release notes has been added to the message that an update is available. This allows the user to better decide whether an update is relevant or not.
Updater: Another option for finding updates:
With this new option we can define that a specific update should not be delivered for a specific version, e.g. because a version is already quite current and an automatic update to the latest version is not necessary. However, a manual update check will find the current version.
Allgemein: Language files updated:
The English and German language files are complete. There are still some texts in other language files that have not yet been translated. Anyone is welcome to take part in translating the language files. Language files are located in the lang folder. A _readme.txt file is also located in this folder.
Reader: Layer view implemented and added:
The new layer view is located in the sidebar of a document. If a PDF file contains layers, this new view can be used to show/hide layers. Renaming layer labels is also possible.
Reader: Open multiple files at the same time:
The file open icon can now be used to open multiple files at the same time. The file selection now allows you to select multiple files, which are then opened in the reader.
Reader: Added dropdown icon to tab container:
The new drop-down icon opens a menu that makes it easier to find and select an open file. This new icon is particularly helpful when many files have been opened.
Reader: Tab display improved:
The visual appearance of tabs and tab container elements has been improved. The new implementation is a bit more modern.
Reader: New text passages found delete old ones:
If you search for a text in the search field, the location found will appear. If you continue searching, the new position will appear and the old position will also be deleted. This makes forward and backward searching easier.
Reader: Search function improved:
The user is now shown a small search status message where they can see a status message and stop the current search. Previously the user had to wait for the search to complete, but searching larger files can take some time and during this time the reader could not be used. The new status message has improved this and the app responds to user input while searching. While searching you can also open another document in another tab.
Reader: General annotation menu extended:
For some specific annotation types, add/modify comment menu items have been added to the general annotation menu.
Reader: Fixed text block selection cursor:
The cursor in the interactive text block selection tool was incorrect and has been corrected.
Reader: Save file compressed:
The save file Compressed option has been added to the Save File menu. This option allows saving the current file in compressed form.
Reader: Save file with profile:
The save file with profile option has been added to the save file menu. This option allows saving the current file using an output profile.
Reader: Copy and save image via context menu:
The page context menu has received new options for copying and saving images. To do this, the user must right-click on an image object. Using the context menu, the user can then copy this image to the clipboard or save it as a file.
Reader: Measuring tool was faulty with rotated pages:
If the user rotated pages and used the measuring tool, no correct values were displayed. When not rotated, the values were correct. This problem has been fixed so that the displayed values are also correct in the rotated state.
Reader: PDFium updated to latest version

New in PDF24 Creator 11.16.0 (Feb 2, 2024)

Updater: Improved download speed:
Downloading the update no longer takes as long as in older versions. Internally, the user interface was updated too often, which had a negative impact on the download speed.
Updater: MSI updates are now possible:
We have extended the updater and integrated the option to also update MSI installations. When installing via the MSI, the setting that updates are searched for and installed now remains active. If you do not want this, you can deactivate this via the switch AUTOUPDATE=No on the command line.
Toolbox: Fixed a problem when creating a file preview:
The PDF file preview was not displayed after adding 5 password-protected PDF files. There was an internal error with password-protected files and the internal worker that generates the preview was not released again to be able to work on further files. This problem has been fixed.
Toolbox: OpenAction in merged PDF files removed:
When merging PDFs, any existing OpenAction is now removed so that the PDF is always opened on the first page.
Toolbox: Color correction in the dark design:
The color for start files was changed for the dark theme. The color came from the light theme, but that was not dark enough.
Common: Integrated options for memory usage when starting the JRE:
Added options to control the MaxRAMPercentage and the Xmx command line arguments of JRE calls to solve memory issues. More information can be found in the manual.
Reader: Components updated:
Webview2 has been updated to version 120.0.2210.144. JRE has been updated to version 17.0.10+7. QPDF has been updated to version 11.8.0. PDFium has been updated to the latest version.
DocTool: Bookmarks when merging on the command line:
Added [-bookmark bookmarkCmd] to the -join handler to keep, delete or create bookmarks. More informationen is available in the manual.
Reader: Page jumping due to scrollbar removed:
Sometimes the displayed page jumps a few pixels to the left after opening a PDF file due to the added vertical scrollbar. This is somewhat annoying and we have optimized this so that it no longer occurs.
Reader: Cursor corrected in snapshot mode:
The cursor in snapshot mode was not set correctly. This is now the cross cursor.
Reader: Artifacts in snapshot mode removed:
Artifacts were removed in snapshot mode. Artifacts occurred when the snapshot rectangle was outside a page.
Reader: Measurement tool added:
The new measuring tool can be used to measure distances in PDF pages. The measurement tool can be selected via the toolbar in the Reader.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.15.2 (Dec 9, 2023)

New in PDF24 Creator 11.15.1 (Nov 23, 2023)

New in PDF24 Creator 11.15.0 (Nov 23, 2023)

DocTool: Fewer temporary changes of the standard printer to the PDF printer:
Removed 3 places in the code where the default printer is temporarily changed to the PDF printer. For the conversion of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, it is no longer necessary for the PDF printer to be the default printer.
Toolbox: Inserting the same image twice in the PDF editor now possible:
It is now possible to insert the same image twice in a row in the PDF editing tool. Previously, you could only insert the same image once.
Toolbox: EXIF-Polyfill removed:
The custom EXIF code has been removed as Webview2 is able to handle it and display the images in the correct orientation. This also fixes a problem with incorrect image orientation in the overlay file preview.
Toolbox: Fixed problem when canceling a render task:
A problem with canceling the current rendering task when rendering a PDF page has been fixed.
Toolbox: Signature import improved:
The import of signatures has been improved. The color and black options are available. Storage has been changed to localStorage. Vectorized images are now often much smaller, so saving should not be a problem in most cases. If a signature cannot be saved for the next use, an info message is displayed. A message is also displayed if the user closes the window and changes have been made that have not yet been saved.
Toolbox: Dark theme improved
Toolbox: Modified Flag added to some tools:
The "Edit", "Annotate", "Sign" and "Redact" tools have been provided with a modified flag. If the modified flag is set, the user must now confirm if they want to return to the start page without saving the change. If the modified bit is not set, no confirmation is displayed. Saving the file deletes the modified flag.
Toolbox: Toolbar for editing, blackening and signing tool improved
Toolbox: Problem with opening modal dialogs fixed
Modal dialogs that are opened within the Web Message Handler are problematic. So we have changed this. This fixes a problem when opening the output profile manager, for example.
Reader: Insert text annotations integrated:
Text can now be highlighted, underlined and striked out via the context menu of the selected text. If a text is already highlighted, underlined or striked out, the context menu offers the option of changing the color, removing the annotation and adding a comment.
Reader: Insert comments into page:
Comments can be added to a page via the context menu. This special annotation can be moved using drag & drop.
Reader: SHIFT + space bar to scroll current view upwards:
Pressing the SHIFT + spacebar key combination now scrolls the current view upwards to make the previously invisible part visible.
Reader: Tooltip for annotations improved
The tooltip for annotations has been improved. A separate implementation is now used. Umlauts are now also displayed correctly. The tooltip displays the content string of an annotation.
Reader: Ctrl+O to open a file
Reader: Text selection improved:
The char box is now used for text selection and no longer just the surrounding box of the character. This makes the selection areas better and more attractive. The speed of rendering the text selection has also been improved.
Reader: PDFBox updated to version 2.0.30
Reader: JRE updated to LTS version 17.0.9_9
Reader: Webview2 updated to version 119.0.2151.58
Reader: Ghostscript updated to version 10.02.1

New in PDF24 Creator 11.13.2 (Jul 14, 2023)

New in PDF24 Creator 11.13.1 (Jul 1, 2023)

New in PDF24 Creator 11.13.0 (Jun 28, 2023)

Doctool: Added function to convert HTML files to PDFs:
This version brings the possibility to convert HTML files to PDF via command line. This is possible via the -convertToPDF switch.
Doctool: Allow overwriting files or not:
PDF24 Creator 11.11.1 allowed the DocTool to overwrite existing files if the user so desires. However, there is one use case where this behavior is not desired. To cover this case, the docTool.forceMakeNameUnique [DWORD32] option can now be used to control how the DocTool should behave. If this value is set to 1, a unique file name will be generated in any case, as was the case in older versions.
Doctool: Outputs on the command line now visible:
Process outputs are now printed on the console when the Doctool is used on the command line. Previously, DocTool outputs could not be traced on the command line.
Common: Consideration of locales when converting numbers:
When converting numbers, the locale is now taken into account and set for certain functions to ensure a specific number format. Without a correct locale, there may be problems with some functions. Currently, this is only an issue when the console is opened because this changes the locale in the app. This change can then cause problems for some users. This issue has been improved.
Common: Missing characters in the console due to incorrect encoding:
Fixed a problem with missing characters in the console when the console is open. We now call setlocale with an empty string to set the default locale for the user or system system. This fixes the problem with the output in the console.
Common: Three memory leak sources found and removed:
These memory leaks are not particularly critical because the PDF24 apps are usually closed again quite quickly and thus the memory is freed up again, but we do not like memory leaks and have thus investigated and fixed them.
Reader: PDF24 Reader now takes into account the DPI of the monitor:
Enabled PER_MONITOR_AWARE_V2 to fix problems with the PDF preview when used in a multi-monitor environment with different DPI values. With this improvement, the PDF preview now behaves correctly even if you move it between monitors.
Reader: Printing multiple PDFs via command line:
Multiple PDF files can be printed at once via the command line. To do this, use the command line as described so far in the manual. To pass another document now, you can place this further document behind the other one. Then both documents will be printed one after the other.
Reader: Jump targets now better visible:
Making the destination visible via bookmarks has been improved. The target area of the page is now taken into account to display the corresponding point of the target. Previously, only a "Go to page" was performed, but this was not good enough for certain views and zoom sizes.
Reader: Faster text selection:
With some PDFs PDF24 Reader could freeze when text was selected. We have analyzed this and improved the implementation. The new version is now much faster and also selecting many words via for example STRG+A is now smooth, even with the files that caused problems.
Reader: PDFium updated to BRANCH chromium/5846:
This means that PDFium's improvements will also benefit PDF24 Reader.
Assistant: Better visible background color for selected file elements
FileTools: Better visible background color for selected file elements
Creator:
When trying to save a modified PDF with PDF24 Creator and the destination file was opened with another program and blocked, the error message "Error=32 File copy error from=tempFile to=destinationFile" appears. This message could only be confirmed with an OK button - saving failed. The OK button has now been replaced with a Retry and Cancel button, so that you now also have the option to close the application that is blocking the destination file and then try to save again using the Retry button.
Toolbox: New color of the primary button:
The color of the primary button is now slightly darker to improve the color contrast of background and font.
Toolbox: Green check mark to emphasize offline processing
A small green check mark next to the text "Works offline" emphasizes that PDF24 processes files offline.
Toolbox: Create electronic invoices integrated:
The tool for creating electronic invoices is now also available offline in PDF24 Creator. Now you can create invoices offline according to ZUGFeRD and XInvoice standards.
Toolbox: CMaps problem in PDF editor fixed:
PDF files using CMaps were not displayed correctly in the editor because of a problem with the CMaps URL. The problem has been fixed.
Toolbox: PDF compression failed when console was open:
When the black console (F12) was opened, PDF compression failed. The problem is fixed.
Toolbox: Execution of Toolbox functions via command line:
A command line switch has been added to start Toolbox functions via the command line. This means that it is now possible to do almost everything that the Toolbox offers via the command line. A detailed description of this function is not yet available. Until the documentation is available in the manual, feel free to contact PDF24 directly.
Toolbox: Fixed a crash caused by converting empty number fields
For some tools, the toolbox crashed if one of the integer values was left empty. In this case the conversion failed and the toolbox crashed. This issue is fixed.
PDFLib: Output of floating point numbers improved:
The way of outputting floating point numbers has been improved. Zeros at the end are now removed, which makes the PDF slightly smaller.
Ghostscript: PDF/A creation and problem with umlauts and other characters fixed:
PDF/A are created with the help of Ghostscript. However, there was a problem that metadata is discarded when using umlauts and other Unicode characters. We have investigated and fixed the problem and sent this patch to the Ghostscript developers. The report can be found here: https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=706781

New in PDF24 Creator 11.12.1 (May 25, 2023)

New in PDF24 Creator 11.12.0 (May 11, 2023)

Common: Components updated:
This release updates some components that are included in PDF24 Creator. The following components have been updated: OpenJDK 17.0.7, Webview2 113.0.1774.35, Ghostscript 10.01.1, Language files
Common: Overlay problem fixed:
Fixed a problem with the overlay method. An overlay could not be applied if the PDF contained a page without defining any content stream. This problem has been fixed.
Toolbox: Split and merge optimizations:
Sometimes after splitting or merging PDFs, some output files were too large because elements that were not yet needed were included. Sometimes too much data is included in a final PDF if the data is referenced in a page, even if it is not actually needed. Improvements have been made to the detection of these so that the resulting files are now smaller after splitting or merging for certain PDFs.
Toolbox: Improvements in converting PDF to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint:
There is also an updated component responsible for converting PDF to Office files. The new component brings improvements in converting PDF to Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Reader: Printing multiple page ranges:
In PDF24 Reader it was previously only possible to print one page range at a time. This has been improved so that now also several page ranges can be defined in the print dialog and finally printed.
Reader: Delete and rotate page in Reader:
The functions Delete page, Rotate page left and Rotate page right have been added to the context menu of a page. The changes of this function are permanent and can be saved. If a page is not oriented correctly or if you need to delete one or the other page, you can now also do this very quickly via the PDF24 Reader. More such functions are on the TODO.
ShellExt: Windows Explorer could crash when using the DLL:
Fixed a problem that could cause Windows Explorer to crash. The shell extension DLL signaled Windows Explorer too early that the DLL could be unloaded, although it was still in use. On some systems, extensions in the form of a DLL are apparently unloaded quite quickly, which then ultimately led to this problem. On many other systems, like our test systems, this problem did not exist and therefore the analysis and fixing of the problem was a bit more difficult. The issue was investigated and the problem was fixed.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.11.1 (Apr 12, 2023)

PDF Preview: Problem with registration fixed:
Fixed a problem with registering the PDF preview handler with the EXE installer. There were two missing fields that prevented the preview handler from loading in some applications, e.g. Outlook.
DocTool: Overwriting of files for many functions now possible:
For most file operations, existing files can now be overwritten if the user chooses to do so. Previously, the user was prompted to overwrite, but a unique file name was still generated under which the file was eventually saved.
Reader: Opened files can now be overwritten:
In previous versions, there was an error message that the file is blocked because it is opened by Reader. We have now implemented a solution for this situation. You can now overwrite the file opened in the reader when you save it via the reader. So you can now fill in form fields and save them under the same filename.
Reader: Lock/unlock system (Windows + L) could change the background color of the toolbar:
On some systems, the background color of the toolbar in Reader changed when the system was locked and unlocked again via Windows key + L. This problem could be reproduced and fixed. This issue could be reproduced and fixed.
Reader: Set focus on the password input field:
A small optimization has been made when asking for a password. There is now a focus on the password input field when the password input field appears, so that the user can enter the password directly without having to click with the mouse in the input field. This makes it a bit faster to enter the password.
Reader: New scalable icons:
This version now also brings new icons for the Reader that are better suited for different screens. The icons are now sharp on screens with different DPI scaling. Previously, raster icons were used and the new version now uses vector icons. This gives the Reader a better look.
Reader: Using the legacy print dialog under Windows 11:
Under Windows 11, the old Windows print dialog is used when printing from the Reader, which was used until Windows 10. The new dialog is somehow not so well thought out and some functions in this dialog can not be controlled and used. Therefore, we now enforce the dialog that was used until Windows 10. In the near future we will offer our own print dialog with extended functions incl. print preview, which will then replace the native dialog.
Reader: PDFium updated to the latest version:
Reader: Improved display of character selection in form fields:
Highlighting of selected characters in form fields have been improved. Areas are now cropped to prevent certain areas from being drawn twice, as drawing twice results in darker areas.
Reader: CTRL + X support for form input fields:
CTRL + X can now be used to cut selected characters in input fields. CTRL + C and CTRL + V were already supported, but CTRL + X was still missing.
Reader: CTRL + LEFT/RIGHT key combination deleted characters instead of selecting them:
The key combination CTRL + LEFT/RIGHT deleted the character next to the caret, but should select it. The problem is now fixed. CTRL + LEFT/RIGHT now selects the character next to the caret.
Reader: Print snapshot and current view maximized:
In the previous version, the function was implemented that you can print the snapshot and the current view. We have extended this function so that you can now print them maximized. So you can print an area with maximum size on one sheet.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.11.0 (Mar 23, 2023)

Common: QPDF updated to version 11.3.0
Common: Webview2 updated to version 111.0.1661.41
Common: wxWidgets updated to current version
PDF Printer: Keep multiple hyphens in file name:
Multiple consecutive hyphens are now no longer removed from the file name, as some users require this.
DocTool: Compression function added to the DocTool command line:
The compression function can be used via the command line switch '-compress'. With this switch it is possible to compress files with the DocTool. The shell extension uses this function.
Shell Extension: New DLL available:
The first version of the new shell extension in the form of a DLL is available. The new DLL makes working with files in Windows Explorer more convenient. Many functions are now available directly in the context menu of a file. This change increases productivity and saves time when working with PDF files. Shell extension settings also work again now. The shell extension DLL can be registered and thus used in Windows via the MSI property 'USESHELLEXTENSIONDLL=Yes' and via the corresponding checkbox in the EXE installer. The new shell extension DLL is not active by default, but still the old static variant.
Toolbox: Invoice tool sometimes did not create PDFs:
The invoice tool in the Toolbox did not create PDFs if the invoice number contained a character that cannot be used for file names, such as a slash (/). This problem has been fixed.
Toolbox: Another problem with loading fonts fixed:
Fixed another font loading issue related to the "Edit PDF" tool. An error occurred and the font selection remained empty. Further improvements have been made here.
Toolbox: Change/unify page size tool added:
The tool for changing or unifying the page size was already available online. Now it is also available offline in PDF24 Creator.
Toolbox: Split PDF Tool optimized:
The new version of the Split PDF tool creates smaller files for some specific PDFs. Sometimes it is the case that many objects remain in the file because they are referenced in annotations. We have checked some cases. The current implementation is now able to remove references so that only the objects needed for the extracted parts remain in the file. There may be other cases that are not yet considered. If this is the case, feel free to send us a PDF so we can analyze this.
Toolbox: PDF merging tool optimized:
The new version is able to retain page/outline tree elements of merged items, and the new version is also better at handling link annotations to merged pages. As much information as possible should be retained and the new optimized version of the tool has made significant progress in this regard.
Toolbox: Icon for switching the scissors in the Split PDF Tool:
With the new icon you can switch the scissors in the Split PDF Tool. With this you can achieve that a scizzuor is used after each page. Then you can disable individual scissors to not split after certain pages. This facilitates some use cases.
Toolbox: Overlay handler uses new implementation:
The overlay handler has been changed to a different implementation that can handle PDFs with crop boxes. This change also affects the "Edit PDF", "Annotate PDF", "Blacken PDF" and "Sign PDF" tools. If you have experienced problems with shifted text after saving in the past, this new version will most likely fix the problem.
Reader: Fixed crash issue:
We have fixed a crash issue when a GOTO action in a page has invalid information and thus the GOTO cannot be executed.
Reader: Jump to a page using the thumbnail view:
The following problem existed in older versions: Click thumbnail, scroll down, click selected thumbnail again, does not jump back. This condition has been improved so that it jumps back to the page even if the thumbnail has been clicked before.
Reader: Optimization of the scrolling during rotation change:
This new optimizer scrolls to the location that was visible before the rotation was changed. This avoids jumping around when changing the page rotation, which was annoying in previous versions.
Reader: Zoom change scroll optimizer improved:
The new version of the optimizer uses the current mouse position as a gravity point, so the area around the mouse position remains in the viewport. This makes zooming with the mouse wheel + CTRL much more comfortable.
Reader: Page background a little brighter:
The page background is now a bit lighter, because the color contrast between white pages and too dark background is a challenge for the eyes.
Reader: Problems with the preview view fixed:
Rotated pages are now correctly displayed in the preview. Changing the rotation of the pages is now also reflected immediately in the preview. The preview elements now also have a small padding, which improves the display.
Reader: Intermediate states in thumbnail window by zooming and rotating eliminated:
Zooming and rotating pages could result in multiple state changes in the thumbnail window, which was bad. This has been improved and the intermediate state has been removed.
Reader: Eliminated another reason for crash:
Double-clicking on a word containing only one letter and pressing CTRL+F could cause a crash. This has now been fixed.
Reader: Copy selected word to the search input field using CTRL+F:
Selecting a word and pressing CTRL+F no longer copied the selected word to the search input field. This is fixed.
Reader: Click on icon "Fit to window" improved:
Clicking the "Fit to Window" icon updates the scale value so that a page fits completely within the viewport. Also, the scroll bars are now updated so that the most visible page in the viewport is fully visible.
Reader: Aktuelle Seite drucken verfügbar:
Die Option "Aktuelle Seite drucken" ist jetzt im Windows-Druckdialog aktiviert, mit der Sie die am meisten sichtbare Seite drucken können. Das Drucken von mehreren Seitenbereichen folgt in der kommenden Version.
Reader: A temporary file was not deleted:
In the function JsPlatform_Mail a temporary file was not deleted. This problem is fixed.
Reader: Javascript mail function call without data:
Calling the Javascript mail function without data should send the current file as a copy. PDF24 did not do this. This has now been improved and the current file is attached to the mail dialog.
Reader: Page context menu extended:
There are now new entries in the context menu of a page. The user can print the page via the context menu. Likewise, one can also print the current view area.
Reader: Multiple files can be opened with one command line call:
Previously, you could only open one file with Reader on the command line. Now you can open more than one file.
Reader: Fixed a problem with the snapshot function of a scrolled view:
Fixed an issue with the snapshot function related to a scrolled view. The snapshot rectangle was not displayed correctly. This has been improved and the visual representation is now correct.
Reader: Snapshot function has new continuation functions:
Previously, the snapshot was copied directly to the clipboard. Now the user can choose what to do with the snapshot via a menu. The user can copy the snapshot to the clipboard, save it as a file or print it.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.10.2 (Feb 10, 2023)

Reader: New possibility to disable Javascript and XFA:
Javascript and XFA can now also be disabled via reader.enableJavaScript and reader.enableXfa. These options can be used in the HKCU and HKLM section of the registry.
Reader: Fixed a problem with wrong display page size:
Fixed an issue with incorrect page size in the UI, especially when the sidebar is open with thumbnails. This could happen if the page sizes and orientations are different in the PDF. This issue is fixed.
Reader: Problem with pixelated pages fixed:
Fixed another problem with pixelated pages when a PDF is loaded and the sidebar is visible. Internally, in the main view, it was then rendered with wrong size and scaled up. This problem is off the table.
Reader: Horizontal scrolling via SHIFT + WHEEL:
With SHIFT + WHEEL you can now scroll a page horizontally. This behavior is also available in other PDF readers.
Reader: PDFium updated to the latest version:
PDFium is the core component of PDF24 Reader. In the PDFium project there were again some improvements, which now also benefit the PDF24 Reader.
Toolbox: PDF Editor uses the crop box to calculate the overlay transformation:
In the PDF Editor, an overlay is created that is placed over the PDF. Here, the crop box is now taken into account so that the final generated PDF after saving looks exactly as in the edit view. In older versions there were misplaced elements due to the missing support for the crop box. Affected tools are Edit PDF, Annotate PDF and Redact PDF.
Reader: Further optimization in the redact tool:
The redaction tool now also deletes resources from redacted pages, as the resources may contain images and overlays with confidential information that could be subsequently read from the PDF.
Common: Standard context menu of Webview2 can be deactivated:
The webview2.enableContextMenu registry option can now be used to enable/disable the default context menu of Webview2.
Common: Webview2 updated to version 109.0.1518.78
Common: JRE updated to version 19.0.2
Common: Language files updated
TWAIN: Issue regarding not visible scanned page fixed:
A scanned file was sometimes not sent to the Creator where the file can be saved. There was an error and the scanner middleware app deleted the file too early, so the Creator could not get the file. This issue has now been fixed as well.
OCR: Automatic page rotation for the profiles deactivated:
When applying a profile, auto page rotation is now disabled as it is controlled by an OCR option and executed by the OCR processor. Previously, you had to create a custom profile with the auto-rotation option disabled in the profile, but this is cumbersome.
OCR: No application of a profile when file is skipped:
If a file was skipped, e.g. because of recognized text, then the engine now also does not apply the profile after the text recognition phase. That is, if the file was skipped, it is passed on without any further changes.
OCR: Grid lines enabled:
The grid lines of the list view are now enabled, which is helpful if you load and process a lot of files.
OCR: Fixed crash problem:
A crash problem when processing multiple files in parallel has been fixed. Internally, due to concurrency, a condition could occur that ultimately caused the app to crash. This reported issue has been investigated and fixed.
OCR: Better visual feedback when adding many files:
When you add many files at once, there is now better feedback and the list updates when a new file is loaded. Previously, the UI only redisplayed at the end when all files were loaded.
Creator: OLE drag & drop functions improved:
The OLE drag and drop functions have been revised and improved to fix two issues with the drag and drop handlers. This optimizes the way files and other information are created and how data is exchanged. This improves compatibility with other programs.
PDF Printer: $id placeholder in shell command:
The $id placeholder is now available in the shell command which can be set when the PDF printer automatically saves a file. Previously this placeholder was only available in the file name.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.10.1 (Jan 20, 2023)

New in PDF24 Creator 11.10.0 (Jan 17, 2023)

Reader: Bring to the foreground:
It was reported to us that PDF24 Reader is not brought to the foreground when another file is opened in PDF24 Reader. Only the taskbar icon was blinking. We have analyzed and optimized this issue so that PDF24 Reader now comes to the foreground.
Reader: CTRL+TAB is now supported:
With the key combination CTRL+TAB you can switch the currently opened PDF to the next one. If only one PDF is open, it is not possible to switch to the next one.
Reader: PDFium update to the latest version:
With the new version of PDFium, the improvements to these components now also benefit PDF24 Reader.
Reader: Fixed quick print problem when printing to network printers:
In one of the last versions, a problem came up again that the quick print on a network printer did not work anymore. Here we have analyzed again why this was the case again. Here we have made further additions so that the problem no longer occurs.
Toolbox: Added multiple pages per sheet function:
In the toolbox, the new tool that was recently added online has also been added. With the "Multiple pages per sheet" tool you can convert a PDF into a PDF that contains multiple pages per sheet.
Toolbox: New options in the blackening/redact tool:
The blackening function can now be controlled via two new parameters. You can set the DPI and image quality via the Windows Registry. These two options influence the quality of the blackened/redacted pages. The two options are 'blackenSecurity.dpi' and 'blackenSecurity.jpgQuality'. See the manual for more information.
Toolbox: New security provider for the blacken/redaction function:
The blackened pages go through a function that ensures that the blackened pages are really safe. To achieve this, the pages are rendered as an image and then replaced with the actual page. This then makes it impossible to make the redacted content visible again. Here we have added a new mode and set it as default. The new provider is more powerful and often produces smaller PDF files because it is able to determine the best image format for a given page. The provider can be changed via "blackenSecurity.provider".
Toolbox: "NoOnlinePdfTools" option did not hide the link to the online tools anymore:
In the Toolbox, the tile for the Online PDF Tools was no longer hidden via the 'NoOnlinePdfTools' option. We have fixed this problem.
OCR: Deskew pages function improved:
For one particular PDF page, the straighten pages feature did not work correctly. We have investigated this and have made improvements so that this page can also be deskewed correctly.
OCR: New message column added:
The new column displays the last message of the OCR recognition, so that the user can better see what is happening.
OCR: Window placement is saved:
Window placement is saved when the tool is closed and restored the next time it is launched, so that the user does not have to reposition or resize every time the tool is opened.
Common: JRE updated to version 19.0.1
Common: Language files updated
Common: Webview2 updated to version 109.0.1518.52
Common: Encryption of PDFs with special passwords
Encryption of PDF files now supports passwords that start with a hyphen (-). This was not possible before.
Common: Updating a component for conversion of files:
The component responsible for converting PDFs to Word, Excel and PowerPoint has been updated. The improvements in this component now also benefit PDF24.
Common: Improvement in UI Lib:
There was also a small improvement in the UI component that is used in some interfaces. The improvement reduces flickering when launching some apps. The startup speed has also been latently improved.
Launcher: Tiles left-aligned and arrangement rethought:
In the launcher, it is a good idea to arrange the tiles left-justified. This is now also the case. We have also slightly changed the arrangement to display the frequently used functions further up.
Installer: WebView2 is now optional:
In both EXE Installer and MSI, WebView2 is now an optional component that can be deselected during installation. This then saves some space on the hard disk. The option should only be deselected if WebView2 is provided by Windows, which should be the case if you keep your Windows up to date.
The EXE installer is based on Inno Setup. How to disable components via command line here is best read in the manual. The name of the component here is webview2.
With the MSI setup you can also define on the command line which components should be activated/deactivated. The ID of the component here is Webview2.
Installer: File context menu is created by the installer:
The shell context menu is now created by the installer and not by the backend. During installation, the user can decide whether to add shell context menu items or not. Via command line you can control here as well.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.9.1 (Jan 3, 2023)

Common: Code for querying the feature status optimized:
The new code makes the query a bit more flexible, which also makes it easier for admins to configure. In the toolbox, there are changes in this area and an admin can now configure the toolbox or the visible tiles more easily.
Common: Code parts for hiding functions extended:
The code parts responsible for hiding functions/tiles in the Toolbox have been improved and more metadata has been added to allow more functions to be disabled via the Windows registry. See the manual for more information.
DocTool: Word to PDF and Excel to PDF issue fixed:
Word to PDF automation now sets the wdDoNotSaveChanges flag when closing a file to prevent a save dialog at the end which blocks the whole conversion process. Why the dialog sometimes appears and sometimes not is still unclear. In the end we just export a PDF without changing the actual file. In the Excel to PDF function, we clear the SaveChanges flag to prevent a possible dialog here as well.
Reader: Changed form fields, focus in the field and subsequent saving/printing:
In PDF24 Reader there was still a problem with form fields. If a form field was changed, the focus was left in the field and then saved or printed, then the changes from this field were not saved or printed. This problem is fixed. Whenever saving or printing, we force the focus to be removed beforehand so that the changes in the field are saved and printed as well.
Reader: Initialization of the print dialog improved:
The print dialog is initialized with the settings of the default printer when the user clicks on the print icon. In this way, the saved default settings of the printer are applied. Most applications behave similarly.
Reader: Initialization of the print dialog improved:
If a form field in a PDF is modified, the PDF is marked as modified. If the PDF is saved, this flag is reset. If the flag is set and a PDF is closed, a message is displayed stating that this PDF has not yet been saved. Here the user can then decide via Yes/No whether to save or not. This prevents accidental closing without saving.
Reader: Fixed crash with a specific PDF:
PDF24 Reader crashed on a certain PDF with start actions. This has been analyzed and the problem was fixed.
Reader: Switching to tabbed mode improved:
Switching to tabbed mode when loading a second PDF file has been improved. The transition is smoother and intermediate artifacts that sometimes occurred are no longer present.
Reader: Message box when opening links or external files:
When the user clicks on a link in a PDF, a message is now displayed whether the corresponding URL should be opened in the default browser or not. The target URL is visible in the message box. Likewise, opening an external file via link is now supported. Here, too, a message is displayed in which the file to be opened is shown. The user can then decide whether to allow the file to be opened or not.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.9.0 (Dec 14, 2022)

Reader: Startup time significantly improved:
The startup performance has been improved significantly. This is especially noticeable when opening PDF files with many pages. In older versions, it can take a while before the first page is visible on the screen. In this version, the number of pages has little effect on the time it takes to display the first page. This makes it much more fun to work with PDF24 Reader. Compared to other PDF Readers, PDF24 Reader now does not have to hide when it comes to the startup time of larger files.
Reader: PDF preview now also possible with 32-bit apps:
We have created a new special PdfPreviewHandler.x86.dll which provides PDF preview for 32-bit applications. This special version of the dll is required for 32-bit applications to load the PDF preview. If you have installed e.g. Outlook x86 on your x64 system, then the preview in Outlook is now possible with the new DLL. During the installation this special DLL is registered in the WOW6432Node section of the Windows registry.
Reader: Zoom tool "Adjust width and height" optimized:
The "Adjust width and height" zoom tool has been optimized. When the horizontal scrollbar is visible, the height of the scrollbar must be taken into account, because in the "Adjust width and height" mode the scrollbars are not visible. Previously, the entire available area was not included in the calculation, so a margin remained at the bottom if the scrollbar was visible before.
Reader: Too large info icon in the info bar is now smaller:
DPI scaling was applied twice, so the icon in the info bar was too large. This problem is fixed.
Creator: File name was partially not taken over:
In the previous version there was a problem with the file name, which was not taken over when loading certain files. For example, if you loaded a Word file, it was given a generic name. The problem is fixed.
Creator: UI rendering artifact issues fixed:
In some cases, artifacts could appear in the UI during certain actions, which are unattractive from the user's point of view. We have investigated these cases and fixed problems. Furthermore, we have made further optimizations to provide a more responsive UI without artifacts.
Creator: No more error message after canceling the password input dialog:
When a password protected PDF is loaded, a dialog is displayed where the user can enter a password. This dialog can also be cancelled or closed. If this dialog is closed or canceled, then no further error message is displayed, because the user has already decided to cancel.
DocTool: Office files are opened read-only for conversion:
For the conversion of Office files we use the COM interface. Here the files are loaded and then exported as PDF. Here it is enough to open the Office files read-only, which we do now and which is also more secure.
Toolbox: User fonts now visible in the toolbox:
The fonts installed per user are now also visible in the Toolbox. These fonts are located in the folder %USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftFonts.
Toolbox: Fixed bug with fonts without name:
Sometimes it can happen that fonts do not have a name. This has led to problems in the PDF24 Toolbox because this name is assumed. We have improved this. If the name is not available, then family name is now used as a fallback. This means that such fonts can now also be used.
Allgemein: Signature problem with the mail function fixed:
In version 11.8.0 the mail functions were optimized. However, this had led to the problem that the automatic signature in Outlook was no longer present in the mail. We have investigated this problem and changed the new functions so that the signature is now preserved.
Common: Ghostscript now also sees the user font directory:
The user font directory has been added to ghostscript's sFONTPATH argument, so Ghostscript is now able to find user fonts.
Common: Fixed problem with shell command in PDF printer:
A PDF printer can be configured to save automatically. Here you can also configure a shell command. We have fixed a bug here that prevented the command from being executed correctly if the command string contained quotes, but they are usually necessary due to spaces.
Common: PDF printer backend optimized:
Added a solution to the problem that the PDF printer did not work when either the backend user server or the print job has elevated permissions and the other does not. In this case the print job got stuck in the queue. We have now provided a solution for this problem so that this constellation no longer leads to a problem.
Common: Core components further optimized:
Some core components have been improved again to further increase speed and make some things faster.
Common: Webview2 updated to version 108.0.1462.46
Common: QPDF updated to version 11.2.0
Common: Language files updated

New in PDF24 Creator 11.8.0 (Dec 1, 2022)

Toolbox: Tooltips now also support line breaks:
In some places we use tooltips that also contain line breaks. However, these were not supported before and the tooltip was displayed in one line. Here we have improved so that line breaks are now also displayed. This makes it easier for the user to understand the tooltip information faster.
Toolbox: PDF pages extract tool improved:
The button to create the final PDF is now only active if some pages are marked. If no pages are marked, then nothing needs to be extracted. Furthermore there are new icons to mark all, even and odd pages and to unmark and toggle them. These help when working with the tool, especially when processing a PDF that contains many pages.
Toolbox: Page mode improved in PDF merge tool:
The button for merging the selected pages now shows the number of pages that will be included in the final PDF. Furthermore, you can select a range of pages by clicking on one page and then a second page by holding down the SHIFT key. There are also new icons to toggle the selection and to select even or odd pages. This makes the use of this tool even more comfortable, especially for PDF files with many pages.
Toolbox: PDF split tool further improved:
In the backend, we now use the same code base for the split functions that we use for our online tools. This has several advantages, for us and for the user, because this code base is better. We have also changed and enhanced the user interface so that all 4 split modes (pages per PDF, even/odd pages, custom, halve pages) are now usable from the new code base. With the new split pages mode you can now also split pages into 2 halves and thus e.g. split pages in A3 format into 2 A4 pages each or pages in A4 format into two A5 pages each.
Toolbox: Tool for deleting PDF pages improved:
The delete PDF pages tool has also received an improvement. There are also some new icons here, which can be used to mark, toggle and unmark pages, or mark even and odd pages.
Toolbox: Crop tool improved:
In the crop tool, it is now possible to change the values of an existing cropbox that may be present. The tool now works relatively. If there is an existing crop box, the margin values are added to or subtracted from the current values. In this way, the visible part of the media box can be reduced or enlarged. If there is no cropbox, the mediabox is used as a base as in the previous version.
Toolbox: Removed favorites filter next to search box:
Since the favorites are displayed in a separate block above all other tools, this favorites filter is no longer necessary. This has been removed.
Toolbox: PDF editing, signing, annotating, redaction tools enhancements:
With the above tools there is an optimization with the active selection. If there is an active selection of multiple elements, then the tools "Stroke Color", "Fill Color", "Stroke Width" and "Opacity" are disabled, because they do not work with a group selection.
Furthermore, there was still a problem when copying and pasting elements via CTRL+C and then CTRL+V. The handles with which you can enlarge and reduce an object were not copied with it, but this is necessary, because some elements have a certain configuration and this must also be preserved when copying.
To make copying elements even easier, we have also added a clone icon to the toolbar. If an element is selected and you click on this icon, the element will be copied and the copy will be pasted into the document next to the selected element.
Toolbox: New shape in PDF edit and annotate tool:
These two tools have received a diagonal cross, which can be used well to mark or fill in control boxes. Before, you could also add a text box and then put an X in it, but with the new form it is a bit faster.
Output Profiles: Fixed a problem with color selection for watermarks and page numbers:
In the last version a new problem with the color selection for the watermark and page numbers appeared. Not all color values could be used. The RBG color components had to have values greater than 15 for the color set in the UI to appear in the document. The conversion of the color from the UI format to the internal format is now correct and all colors can be used again.
Output Profiles: New checkbox in the security settings:
A new checkbox has been added in the security settings to control the use of AES when encrypting. RC4 or AES can be used for 128-bit encryption, and only AES can be used for 256-bit encryption. If the check box is not selected, RC4 is used for 128-bit encryption. For 256-bit encryption, on the other hand, AES is always used. In general, AES should always be used because it is more secure.
DocTool: "Use AES" checkbox also added to encryption dialog:
We have also added the "Use AES" checkbox to the DocTool encryption dialog that opens when you click on the "Encrypt PDF" tile in the Shell File Tools user interface. Here you can now also specify whether AES should be used for 128-bit mode or not. In general you should always use AES because the older RC4 mode is insecure.
DocTool: The "sendAsMail" handler had problems with the application of profiles:
If you use the DocTool via command line and execute the sendAsMail handler, then you can also specify a profile which is applied before the file is passed to the mail system. But here there was a problem. The mail program did not open when a certain profile should be applied. There was an error when collecting the created files and transferring them to the mail app.
DocTool: Improvements in converting Office documents to PDF format:
We have changed the way the Doctool converts Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to PDF files. The new version uses the export method of Word, Excel and PowerPoint to export a PDF directly instead of printing the file to the PDF printer. This gives better results because not all information can be sent through the printer interface. The fallback method is the way via the PDF printer. The fallback method can also be forced via the Windows registry if necessary. In addition, the fallback print method no longer temporarily changes the default printer. The active printer is set via COM and then the print method is called. This also reduces the risk of changing the default printer in Windows.
DocTool: New flags at the command line:
The -includeFileExtensions and -excludeFileExtensions command line options have been added. This can be used to filter input files by extensions, which is extremely useful in combination with the -expandDirs and -expandDirsRecursive command line options when only certain files are to be processed.
Creator: Adjustable resolution for preview images:
You can now use the creator.thumbResolution (DWORD) value in the registry to control the resolution of the thumbnail images of a page. The default value is 72 and the value is scaled depending on the DPI scaling factor. If the resolution of the thumbnails is not sufficient, then you now have the possibility to set a better resolution here.
Also there is another new configuration value creator.thumbRenderScaleFactor (DWORD) to render internally with a higher resolution and then to output the resulting image with the resolution creator.thumbResolution (DWORD). Default value is 1 to not render with higher resolution. This often improves the preview images, but also takes a little more time to create.
Creator: Size problem with preview images fixed:
In the view with the largest preview images, the page area was no longer completely filled as before. We have improved this and the thumbnails in the large view also fill the entire available area again.
Creator: Memory leak detected and fixed:
Preview image memory was not being fully freed when a document was removed from view. In fixing the issue, we also made changes to the internal data structures so that less data needs to be held in RAM.
Common: Resolution of the images in the PDF preview adjustable:
The new configuration value pdfPreview.resolution (DWORD) can be used to control the resolution of the generated images. The default value here is 150. The value is scaled depending on the DPI scaling factor. If the previews do not have sufficient resolution, then you can use this option to improve the preview.
Also here you have the possibility to render internally with higher resolution using the new option pdfPreview.renderScaleFactor (DWORD) and to output the result images then with the resolution pdfPreview.resolution (DWORD). Default value is 1 to not render with higher resolution.
Common: Webview2 updated to version 107.0.1418.56 and WebView2Loader updated to version 1.0.1418.22:
Whenever there are new versions of Webview2, we switch to them in order to be up-to-date here. Microsoft is constantly releasing new improvements that we would like to have on PDF24 for various reasons.
Common: Email functions have been improved:
There have been some enhancements to the email functions to make them more flexible. The MAPI and Outlook OLE handlers can now handle the Subject, Text, From, To, CC and BCC properties of an email. The trigger for these enhancements are the new implementations in PDF24 Reader, described below.
Common: Some core elements improved:
PDF24 is written in C++. By using current compilers we can now also use some things to improve our core elements. Two core elements got an improvement which bring more speed and need less RAM.
Reader: Behavior in the zoom option "Fit Window" optimized:
In zoom mode "Fit Window", you can now use the mouse wheel to jump to the next or previous page. Mouse wheel events in this mode now navigate between pages. This behavior is built into many PDF readers and some users have requested such an option.
Reader: Support of the forward-backward mouse buttons:
You can now also use the additional mouse buttons, which are usually used for navigating forward and backward, to navigate between pages. This way you can quickly move to the next or previous page.
Reader: PDFium component update:
PDFium has been updated to the latest version, which gives us new possibilities for improvements. Many of the new features are already used by PDF24 Reader in this version. The new features in PDF24 Reader are described below.
Reader: JavaScript support now available:
We now compile PDFium with JavaScript support. So we could enable and extend JavaScript support in PDF24 Reader. JavaScript is needed for various forms and PDF24 Reader should also be able to display these forms. But there is also a new option in the Windows registry to disable JavaScript support if needed.
Reader: Support for XFA forms:
We now also compile PDFium with XFA support. This allowed us to enable and extend XFA support in PDF24 Reader. We had to make many enhancements to PDF24 Reader to make XFA forms usable. PDF files containing XFA forms can now be opened with PDF24 Reader. But there is also a new option in the Windows registry to disable XFA support if needed.
Reader: Keyboard input for forms improved:
This version fixes problems with form fields and key events. Some keys such as Enter were not processed correctly. This was a problem for some forms. We have analyzed the problems and incorporated improvements.
Reader: Snapshots with better quality:
Snapshots are no longer scaled down by the DPI scaling values, as this is unexpected for the user. The Snapshot tool now copies what the user sees on the screen without scaling down. The images produced are now better as a result of this change.
Reader: Using a text cursor with text input fields:
When hovering the mouse over a text input field, a text cursor is now displayed, as the user would expect. So the user also sees that he can set the cursor in the text field when he clicks into a text field.
Reader: CTRL+F behavior optimized:
If you highlight a word in the document and then press CTRL+F, the highlighted word is copied to the search field and the search field is focused. If no word is highlighted, then only the focus is set.
Reader: Form fields with drop-downs work now:
Form fields that contain a drop-down menu can now be displayed by PDF24 Reader and the user can use these drop-downs. In previous versions, the drop-down menu was not displayed when the drop-down button was clicked.
Reader: "/printFlags XXX" command line option added:
The value of the /printFlags option is a comma-separated list of flags that control the printing process. Currently the following flags are supported: forceImagePrint, forceEmfPrint, grayscalePrint.
Reader: Initialization of the printing process changed:
The way printing is initialized has been changed to fix a problem when printing to network printers. Some users have reported that printing to network printers causes problems when the print function is started via command line. We have investigated the problem, recreated it, and were able to make changes so that printing to a network printer was now possible in our test environment.
Reader: wxWidgets component updated:
We have updated the wxWidgets component to the latest version. wxWidgets is used as GUI framework for PDF24 Reader. We had to change some things to support the high DPI changes in wxWidgets. At the same time we added some small improvements in providing icons in the app.
Reader: Save icon in the toolbar extended:
The save button in the toolbar now has a drop-down menu where you can find the new save flattened function. This new function removes form fields and writes the values of fields to the page's data stream. This makes it much harder to change the form field data afterwards. When you fill out a form and submit it, you should always send a flattened version of the PDF so that you can't easily change the data of the fields afterwards. So far, this function only works for standard forms in PDFs. For XFA forms this function cannot be used so far. Therefore the function is disabled in the menu if the PDF document uses an XFA form. As soon as PDFium can also flatten XFA forms, we will improve this and make the function available for XFA forms as well.
Reader: Icons with thinner lines are now slightly darker:
The display mode icons are now slightly darker because they use thinner lines. The darker color now makes these icons fit better with the other icons.
Reader: Removed flickering of the cursor when moving over some form fields:
Certain form fields can use a different cursor. With some fields, however, a temporary resetting to a different cursor could be observed. This effect was annoying and here we have improved.
Reader: Added right-click menu to text fields:
If you right-click on a text field in a form, a context menu opens. This menu can be used to copy the selected text or to paste text from the clipboard into the text field. CTRL+C and CTRL+V as well as CTRL+A can still be used.
Reader: Context menu for selected text opens only when right-clicking on this text:
The "Copy selected text" menu now only opens when the selected text is right-clicked. This is the behavior that is usually implemented. Previously, it was possible to open the menu even if the right-click was not on the selected text, but this is unusual.
Reader: Fixed problems with filling form fields in "Two pages side by side" display mode.
Fixed the problem with filling form fields on the second page in the "Two pages side by side" display mode. Keystrokes were going to the first page and not to the page that has the focus. Internally, we improved the control so that input always goes to the page that has focus.
Reader: Using the pointer cursor for buttons in forms:
Previously, the arrow cursor was used, but now the pointer cursor is used to make it easier for the user to see that the button can be clicked.
Reader: Submit function for forms supports "mailto" URLs:
If an mailto URL is used with a form, then an email dialog opens so that the user can send the email with the form data.
Reader: Significant performance improvements when rendering PDFs:
Noticeable performance improvements have been incorporated when rendering pages of a PDF. The result of these improvements is that pages can be displayed much faster in Reader. The new implementation is often twice as fast, and it's noticeable. Reader is now much more responsive to user input, as the time it takes Reader to display pages has been significantly reduced. This is especially noticeable when zooming pages with CTRL+mouse wheel. This also reduces power consumption, which is good for a notebook battery.
Reader: PDF preview handler for 32-bit applications:
PDF preview handler from PDF24 Reader should now work in 32-bit applications installed on 64-bit Windows. Users have reported that this was not possible. We have analyzed the problem and made enhancements to the preview handler registry that 32-bit applications should now be able to use the PDF24 Reader preview handler.
Reader: Improvements in starting the reader:
There were three UI elements that caused the toolbar to recreate itself when the Reader was launched. We have improved this point so that the start of the Reader is not unnecessarily delayed.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.7.0 (Oct 31, 2022)

Creator: Fixed problem with drag and drop from Creator to other apps:
Fixed an issue with dragging and dropping multiple files from Creator to another app. The error was that not all files were transferred. We have analyzed this issue and fixed it. You can now drag and drop files to another app again without any problems and save the files that way.
Creator: Preview images now use PNG format:
Previously JPG was used to display the preview images, but this is disadvantageous especially for documents with text. We have switched to PNG here so that documents with text are also previewed a bit better.
Creator: Preview images was not fully visible in landscape mode:
A preview image was not fully visible when the image was in landscape format. Due to a bug, the centering algorithm was applied to images in portrait orientation instead of landscape orientation. This is now fixed.
Creator: Wait cursor when loading PDF files:
When loading a PDF file, a wait cursor is now displayed to give the user feedback that a file is loading. For larger files, it may take a few seconds for the file to load.
OCR: Unwanted console no longer opens:
An unwanted console was opened when the OCR tool was started from the command line to process files. This is not correct, because the Console is not necessary here. Here we have optimized and the Console is no longer opened.
PDF Printer: Limitation of jobs running in parallel:
The number of parallel running jobs via the PDF printer is now limited. This can be controlled via the registry option PrinterServiceHandlerLimit (DWORD). The default value is 1. Previously we had no limit and this could cause resource problems, especially if a printer is configured to save automatically and if the printer has to process many print jobs in a short time. With the default value of 1, the jobs are processed one by one.
Toolbox: Image extraction improved:
Image extraction has been improved. Some PDFs have cyclic references and this is now detected. Previously, these PDFs could not be processed and no result was generated. Also, more images can be exported and a status is displayed during export.
Toolbox: Better support for TIFF in the Images to PDF tool:
Images to PDF Tool now supports TIFF files better. Bitonal TIFF images are handled in a special way so that the resulting PDF file remains small. Multi-page TIFF files are now supported as well.
Toolbox: Unwanted focus frame removed:
The focus frame from the page container in the "edit pdf", "annotate pdf", "sign pdf" and "blacken pdf" tools has been removed because this is not wanted.
Toolbox: Added more keyboard shortcuts:
The tools "edit pdf", "annotate pdf", "sign pdf" and "blacken pdf" now support CTRL+Z to undo, CTRL+Y to redo and CTRL+A to select all objects. Also you can use LEFT and RIGHT key to navigate between pages.
Toolbox: Home icon added to some tools:
The tools "edit pdf", "annotate pdf", "sign pdf" and "blacken pdf" now have a home icon in the toolbar, which can be used to return to the home page to perform further functions. This was not possible before. Before you had to close and reopen the toolbox to use another function. With the new home icon this is now easier.
Reader: Title of the print job changed:
The title of the print job is now only the file name without the directory. This is handled by most programs and it is easier to keep track in the print queue.
Reader: Keyboard shortcuts improved:
The key combination to move to the next/previous page is CTRL+LEFT or CTRL+RIGHT. If the horizontal scrollbar is not needed and therefore not visible, you can now also simply click LEFT or RIGHT to navigate to the previous/next page.
Assistant und FileTools: Number of files is displayed:
The PDF Printer Assistant and shell file tools now show the number of files in the file list. This is often useful to make sure that all files have been loaded.
TWAIN: UI launching improved:
A problem with calling the Twain driver has been fixed. The GUI of the Twain driver could hang on some actions. We use a new flag when calling the GUI process and this fixes the problem in our test environment.
TWAIN: DSM Manager updated to the latest version
General: Lower CPU load when reading data from another process:
When PDF24 starts other processes and reads data from this process, the CPU is now less utilized. The buffers have been slightly increased and the reading process now goes into wait mode more often.
General: Language files updated and Arabic.lang added
General: Ghostscript updated to version 10.0.0
General: Webview2 updated to version 107.0.1418.24
General: QPDF updated to version 11.1.1
General: Launch Ghostscript optimized
We no longer set the Ghostscript environment variables GS_DLL and GS_LIB. We now only use command line arguments when running Ghostscript. We also now use -sFONTPATH=%windir%/fonts to allow Ghostscript to find the installed fonts in the Windows fonts folder. We have removed the fontmap file that the PDF24 installer created in the previous version, since it is no longer needed. Also, -dNEWPDF=true is now set by default, which can be controlled via the registry setting gs.useNewPdf. The old Postscript-based PDF reader is deprecated and will be removed in the next version of Ghostscript.
DocTool: Overwrite profile values via command line
When starting the DocTool with the -applyProfile statement, the profile values can now be overwritten with the command line argument -profileParam key value. This is very useful for some actions, e.g. to set a specific watermark text or password.
Output Profile Manager: Added UI to select a font:
Added a font selection button next to the watermark and page number font fields. When the user clicks the button, a popup window opens where the user can select an available font. This makes the font selection more convenient.
Output Profile Manager: ARGB fields labeled:
ARGB fields in the watermark and page number area have been prefixed with a letter to make it easier for the user to see what a field is for.
Output Profile: Watermark and page number function changed:
When saving a file with an output profile, we have changed the way how page numbers and watermarks are added to the PDF. The new way uses the same functions as the tools in the Toolbox. These are better and support Unicode characters if the font used can display them. Also, we now have a single code base that is easier to maintain. On the TODO list are more watermark related features which we can implement better with the new method.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.6.0 (Oct 12, 2022)

PDFLib: More improvements implemented:
Some PDF files could not be opened. We have investigated this and made improvements to support those as well.
Common: WebView2 aktualisiert auf Version 106.0.1370.42
Common: Compiled again with /CETCOMPAT=false
/CETCOMPAT seems to cause problems on some computers. Some users have reported problems. We have decided to build with CETCOMPATO=false in this version.
DocTool: Crop via command line:
The version brings support for defining a crop box via the CLI of pdf24-doctool.exe. More about this can be found in the manual.
Output profiles: Support for placeholder %USERNAME% for author field in info area:
This version brings support for the %USERNAME% environment variable in the author field of an output profile. This allows to generalize the output profiles and helps to distribute the profiles. Also, some profiles can now be moved to the HKLM section of the registry.
Output profiles: Support for unencrypted passwords in output profiles:
User passwords for output profiles can now be stored unencrypted. This can be controlled by the profile keys pdf-passwordEncryptionMode and pdf-encryptPasswords. If pdf-encryptPasswords=false or pdf-passwordEncryptionMode=none is set, no encryption is used.
Toolbox: Convert PDF to secure PDF built-in:
Added a converter that turns PDFs into secure PDFs. A truly secure PDF in many ways is one in which all pages of the PDF are replaced with a rendered version of the page. The new pages contain only images. The quality can be controlled.
Toolbox: Fixed problem with the UI of the overlay tool:
Fixed a problem with the UI of the overlay tool. If you added files, then removed one, and then added the missing file again, the form was not reactivated. This problem is fixed.
Toolbox: PDF Viewer component of some tools extended:
The PDF Viewer component used in the Edit, Annotate and Sign tools has been improved. CTRL + MouseWheel is now supported to zoom a page. Furthermore, a render task is aborted when a new task replaces the old one to make the viewer more responsive.
Reader: Text selection accelerated:
Selecting text and drawing the selection areas is now much faster. For many sub-ranges, the text selection was often not as responsive as desired. This has been improved.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.5.0 (Oct 5, 2022)

General: All translation files updated:
With version 11.5.0 all available language files are updated. There were again many elements to translate, which were added with the last versions. Now it was time again to translate all texts.
General: WebView2 updated to version 106.0.1370.34:
PDF24 Creator 11.5.0 now again brings the current WebView2, which is used internally by the toolbox. How to use the Evergreen version from Windows can be read in the manual.
General: JRE updated to version 19
General: PDF Lib improved:
We've also improved our PDF Lib because we have seen some potential problems with some PDF files not generated by PDF24.
Toolbox: Images in PDF tool improved:
There are now more options that allow you to control the conversion process. You can specify the page size and orientation and also a DPI value so that PDF24 can calculate the page size based on the image size.
Toolbox: Optimization of tools to edit, annotate, sign PDFs:
A big new feature in this version is the support of installed system fonts. There is a new font selector where you can choose one of the installed system fonts. This allows you to customize the text. This improvement also fixes the problem that certain texts cannot be mapped with every font. For example, when entering Chinese text, you now have the option to use a font that supports these Chinese characters.
Furthermore, there are improvements in the state retention. The text size input field now keeps the last set value. If you now add a new text, the font size of the saved value is set. The same applies to the font selection.
Texts can not only be filled, but the characters can also be outlined. For this purpose there is the input field for the stroke width. This input field now supports fraction numbers, so that you can fine-tune the stroke width.
Toolbox: Added missing text translation on the toolbox home page:
There were still two texts on the home page of the toolbox that could not be translated yet. These texts now also use the language files.
Toolbox: Fixed text problems with some language files:
When using certain translations, there were problems with some texts in the toolbox. There were internal errors and some texts were not visible. We have improved this and all translations can now be used and displayed correctly again.
Toolbox: Color selection tool of some tools improved:
The color selection tool in various PDF tools, such as Edit PDF, now has an input field that displays the current color code. You can also change this code directly so that experienced users don't always have to go through the color picker.
Toolbox: Improvement of tools Add watermark and page numbers:
The page numbers and watermarks tools have been improved. This version now uses a new and better method for inserting page numbers and watermarks into a PDF. Furthermore, there is improved font support for these tools as well. We changed the user interface a bit, so that you can now select all installed system fonts via a font selector, which is used for the watermark and the page number text. This also fixes the problem with text that can't be encoded with one of the default fonts, since you can now select a font that supports the text.
Toolbox: Fixed issue with transparent PNGs in Edit PDF tool:
Transparent PNGs could be added to the PDF, but the result or the generated PDF was incorrect. The image in the PDF was partially distorted. Here we have improved and fixed the problem.
Reader: Display of the reader improved when it is minimized:
When PDF24 Reader is minimized and you double-click on a PDF file to open it in PDF24 Reader, PDF24 Reader now exits the minimized state and displays the newly opened file on the screen. In previous versions, only the taskbar icon of the PDF24 Reader flickered and you then had to click this icon to display the Reader on the screen.
OCR: Update of tesseract to version 5.2.0

New in PDF24 Creator 11.4.0 (Aug 27, 2022)

JRE updated to version 18.0.2
JRE outputs are displayed in the Debug Console:
For certain JRE program calls, the outputs were not displayed in the debug Console. The missing outputs are now visible.
New Ghostscript version:
New Ghostscript 9.56.1 build is used. Removed Tesseract/Leptonica support as it is not needed here. This saves some space. We have also removed the code that adds %%Invocation: comments to PDF files for security reasons, as this could hide information you don't want in a PDF.
Check if the PDF24 folder for temporary files is writable:
In rare cases the PDF24 folder for temporary files is not writable. If this is the case, a message will now appear with instructions on how to solve the problem.
Manual extended and many new details added
Special handling for JRE command line arguments:
It will now re-encode the JRE command line arguments in the apps if GetACP() returns the value CP_UTF8 and if this does not match the system property sun.jnu.encoding. If the two encodings do not match, then the JRE passes command line arguments with incorrect encoding and the app may then fail to find files. There seems to be a bug in this JRE version (https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8272352), which is now marked as fixed and will be fixed with the JRE 19 version.
Updater: More parameters added:
The update request now also includes the Windows version, the installer used and the OS architecture, so that updates can be delivered based on this data. The updater itself can also evaluate this data in the update lists and make decisions.
Toolbox: Old IE version removed:
The old IE version is no longer used and has now been removed. The new Webview2 version continues to be developed and is now also much more comprehensive than the old IE version.
Toolbox: Page enlargement was defective:
The page magnification icon of the rendered page of a PDF in some tools stopped working. Clicking on the icon resulted in an error and the preview did not open. The problem is fixed now.
Toolbox: Fixed scroll problem with page magnification icon:
With the page magnification icon on some tools opening a page preview scrolled the whole page up, which was annoying because you then had to scroll back down. This has been improved.
Toolbox: Tool for editing PDF metadata added:
With this new tool you can control the metadata of a PDF and then also edit it. This is often very useful, for example to correct data before publishing a PDF file.
Toolbox: Redaction tool now also removes annotations:
The redaction tool now removes page annotations from redacted pages because the annotations may contain information you want to hide.
Toolbox: Flickering at startup eliminated:
The Toolbox window class now uses a white background color to avoid flickering at startup.
Toolbox: Error handling at startup further improved:
For some users there are problems with starting the Toolbox and no error message. Here we have further improved and found more program parts that have not yet reported errors.
Toolbox: Full mode at PDF to HTML Converter:
Added the full mode for converting PDF to HTML. Previously only text mode was available.
Toolbox: PDF to SVG Converter added:
The SVG option is now available in the "Convert PDF to ..." tool.
Toolbox: PDF to Epub and Epub to PDF Converter added:
Epub option is now available in "Convert PDF to..." tool and "Convert to PDF" tool now also supports Epub.
Toolbox: Added startup animation to show Webview2 loading:
The animation is helpful so that the user can see that something is being loaded here. Especially when you start the toolbox for the first time, it can take a few seconds for Webview2 to load completely.
Toolbox: Minimum window size limit:
The window size of the toolbox has been limited to the minimum window size so that the toolbox can no longer be reduced so much that the window content is no longer visible. This limitation is also common in web browsers.
Toolbox: Improvement of the tool display for input files:
The invoice creation tool is no longer visible when the toolbox is started with input files that should be processed with the toolbox, because the invoice tool cannot process these files. Also, tools that can process only one file are hidden when there are multiple input files.
Toolbox: Additional task executor to limit resource use:
Now also a Task Executor is used for internal automatic conversion to PDF and for unlocking PDFs to limit the number of tasks and prevent excessive resource usage. This prevents crashes when many files are loaded.
Toolbox: Avoidance of double processing:
Added some checks to prevent some tasks from being performed twice, which can happen in some situations.
Toolbox: Improvements in support for password protected PDFs:
Some more tools can now handle password-protected PDF files. These include the tools to rotate, extract, and remove PDF pages.
Toolbox: Added block for favorites:
The home page for selecting tools has been extended and a block with favorites functions has been added at the top of the page. The favorites are now better displayed and the user can use the tools that he uses frequently more quickly. Individual functions appear in the favorites block when the little star is clicked.
Toolbox: Range selection function of pages:
The Remove PDF Pages and Extract PDF Pages tools now have a range selection feature. You can now use the SHIFT key to select a range of pages. First click on a page, then press and hold the SHIFT key, and then click on a second page. The effect is that all pages in that range are selected/deselected for removal or extraction.
Toolbox: A problem with umlauts path name was fixed:
Some tools in the Toolbox could not process some files if the pathname contained an umlaut. This problem is fixed.
Creator: Assembling of files optimized:
The Creator now recognizes whether a simple joining of files or a more complex merge must be performed when saving a PDF. The joining is easier to do and here we also have the additional option of merging the page directory.
Creator: Fit tool improved during preview:
The tool that adjusts the scaling in the preview so that a page fits horizontally and vertically in the window sometimes did not work correctly. Improvements have been made here.
Creator: Flickering further optimized:
Selecting/deselecting pages with the preview no longer flickers. Now only the selection frame is redrawn and not the entire page element.
Creator: Overlay preview page orientation optimized:
The overlay preview could display incorrect page orientation for a short time if the user clicked the navigation buttons quickly. This has been fixed.
Creator: Toolbar of a file optimized:
The buttons of the toolbar of a file are now slightly wider and can be clicked on better. The menu icon in the toolbar is now also no longer set off.
Creator: Width of the title element of a file reduced
The width of the title element of a file is now slightly smaller, so that the title is no longer above or below the toolbar.
Creator: Page rotation synchronized:
The rotation of a page in the file preview and in the larger overlay preview is now synchronized. When you rotate a page in the larger overlay preview, the corresponding page also rotates in the file preview. The other way around works as well.
Creator: Saving a file via the overlay preview:
Clicking the save icon in the toolbar of the overlay preview now uses the save function of the file and no longer the save function of the overlay preview, because this can only ever save the current page as an image. This has always been a bit user unfriendly and this version improves that.
DocTool: Output folder for multiple files:
Some sink handlers now ask for an output folder only once when processing multiple input files. All processed files are then stored in this output folder. This behavior existed in previous versions, but was no longer used due to an extension of the program and it then asked for a file name for the output file for each input file.
DocTool: Forwarding files to the toolbox via the file tool UI:
The file tool UI has received a new tile, which forwards the selected files to the toolbox to process them there.
DocTool: Added optimizations for the page extraction dialog:
There were also some improvements in the page extraction dialog of the file tools. The File Tools can be opened by selecting files in Windows Explorer and then right-clicking to select PDF24.
Fixed a crash in a special case.
Making a page visible in the view has been improved when using the Previous/Next Page tools.
Range selection function added. You can now use SHIFT to select or deselect a range of pages. Click on a page or checkbox, then press and hold the SHIFT key and click a second page or checkbox. This will then select or deselect all pages in the range.
Cancel button removed. Dialog can be closed with the window's close icon.
The Save button no longer automatically closes the page extraction dialog. The user can close the dialog using the window's close icon. You can then extract and save multiple areas one after the other.
The UI elements have been restructured a bit and a new element has been added to show the current page ranges that would be extracted if you would save the current selection.
Twain: Scanner functions improved:
Some improvements have been made to the functions for using scanners.
Inter-process communication has been improved.
Other console editions are available.
The parent Twain window does not need to be displayed when listing sources. This prevents the Windows taskbar from flickering during the source collection process.
Added the "Collect Files" option to the source selection dialog to control whether scanned data should be collected and transferred as one file with pages, or whether each scanned page should be transferred immediately.
Reader: Display of PDF/A and PDF/X version:
The PDF/A and PDF/X version is now displayed in the document info area if the PDF file contains this information. This then allows you to see if the PDF uses these standards.
Reader: CTRL+W shortcut is supported:
CTRL+W closes the current active tab/PDF or closes the entire window if only one PDF is open.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.3.0 (Jul 14, 2022)

pdf24.exe backend system starts when together with the toolbox if the backend process is not already started:
If the pdf24.exe backend system is not running, it is started by other PDF24 apps. The PDF24 Toolbox did not do this. This has now been changed so that the Toolbox also starts the pdf24.exe backend system.
Webview2 updated:
The current version 103.0.1264.49 of Webview2 is now used. How to use the Evergreen version of Windows is described in the manual in the registry settings section.
Installer: More translations added
Installer: Checkboxes for creating the Toolbox/Launcher icons:
The new checkboxes allow you to control which desktop icons should be created. Usually this is an icon for the toolbox. But now the user has the possibility to decide which icons should be created.
Installer: MSI Installer detection integrated:
If another PDF24 installation via MSI already exists, this will now be detected by the EXE installer.
Toolbox: Fixed problem when closing the app:
Closing the application window right after it appeared could result in a process still running in the background. This problem is fixed.
Toolbox: Create bookmarks based on file names:
The Merge PDF and the Images to PDF tool have now received an option to create bookmarks based on file names. Some users have requested such a feature.
If the bookmark function is used with the Merge PDF Tool, then the Java-based implementation is always used when executing the function, since this feature is only available here.
Toolbox: Problems with merging many PDFs fixed:
The Java-based PDF implementation had a problem merging hundreds of files due to command line length limitations. This problem has now been fixed. We have implemented a new command execution mechanism to overcome this limitation and to generally increase flexibility for features we will add in the near future.
Toolbox: Javascript workers are now destroyed:
The previewer now destroys the pdfjs webworker when the previewer is closed to release resources.
The PDF page renderer, which renders all pages of the PDF, now also destroys the pdfjs webworker when all pages have been processed.
Toolbox: Potential toolbox crash fixed:
The PDF thumbnail generator now uses an executor to limit the number of thumbnail generators running in parallel. The toolbox could crash because too many resources were used by massively parallel running thumbnail generators.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.2.0 (Jun 29, 2022)

Using /CETCOMPAT when compiling:
When compiling EXE and DLL files we now use the compiler option /CETCOMPAT.
Reader: Closing problem fixed:
With certain PDF files, a problem could occur when closing the Reader and opening the page view, so that the Reader then crashed. This problem has been fixed.
Fixed problem when calling Ghostscript:
When calling Ghostscript with long command line there was a problem with an argument so that the call did not return the desired result. This problem has been fixed.
Assistent: Fixed problem when processing small files:
If the assistant is started with a small file, then there was a problem here when starting the GUI, which is now fixed.
Toolbox: Joining PDF files extended:
When joining PDF files, the function of PDFBox is now used by default, because here the page tree is also included in the new PDF. This change affects the joining of entire PDF files. QPDF is still used for the page-by-page function. Which provider is used for joining can be set via the setting variable 'joinPdfsProvider'. See the manual for more details on this setting.
Toolbox: Footer bar in the status window extended:
There is now a footer bar in the job processing status window. This bar can be hidden using the feature.toolbox.jobMonitorFooter option. More about this in the manual.
Webview2 update to version 102.0.1245.41:
With this version of Webview2, there are new features that we can use, which are used, among other things, in the new Invoice module in the Toolbox.
Toolbox: When starting Webview2 the correct language is now also set:
When starting the user interface, the language is now also set in Webview2, so context menus etc. are now displayed in the correct language.
Toolbox: Convert PDF to images tool improved:
When converting a PDF to images, PDFBox is now used, which produces the same good results as the corresponding online tool from PDF24. Furthermore, the status of the conversion is now also displayed in the status window.
Toolbox: PDF to Text convert tool improved:
When converting a PDF to text, PDFBox is now also used, which produces the same good results as the corresponding online tool from PDF24. Furthermore, the status of the conversion is now also displayed in the status window. This tool also affects the compare PDF tool which gives a better result now.
Toolbox: PDF metadata removal tool added:
With the new PDF metadata removal tool you can remove all metadata from the PDF so that the new PDF will not contain any hidden information.
Toolbox: Invoice generator tool added:
With the new invoice generator tool you can visually create an invoice and then save or print it as a PDF. Ideal for occasionally creating an invoice.

New in PDF24 Creator 11.1.0 (May 4, 2022)

New in PDF24 Creator 11.0.1 (Mar 25, 2022)

New in PDF24 Creator 11.0.0 (Mar 22, 2022)

Toolbox - Webview2 is now used instead of IE for the UI:
IE as rendering engine has been replaced by Webview2. Webview2 is Chrome based, more modern and brings many advantages. With this change, we now have many new opportunities in improving the UI and can use current standards. With the introduction of Webview2 the installer of PDF24 Creator became a bit bigger, but it is worth it.
Toolbox - Import signature via camera:
The PDF signing tool now also offers the possibility to import a signature via camera. This option has been available in the PDF24 Online Tools for a long time, but could not be implemented in the PDF24 Creator because the old IE based UI did not support it. With the new Webview2 based UI this is now possible.
Toolbox A dark theme is now available:
The online tools already had the dark theme in the UI, but the PDF24 Creator did not yet. With the introduction of Webview2 we could now enable and improve the dark theme. The theme can be toggled by the palette icon in the UI.
Toolbox - Several small improvements in the UI:
As part of the transition to Webview2, we have incorporated some improvements in the UI that enhance the experience of working with the program. More improvements will follow in subsequent versions.
Toolbox - Using a newer PDFJS version:
PDFJS is used in many places in the Toolbox UI to render and display PDF pages. With the older version, some PDFs could not be rendered correctly. With the introduction of Webview2 we could now use a current version of PDFJS.
Toolbox - Limitation on file size increased for the file drop box:
The file drop boxes component in the UI had a default file size limit of 256 MB. This is too little for some files and a larger file could not be loaded into the file box. We have now increased this limit to 1000 MB.
PDFLib - Improvement in loading of certain PDFs implemented:
We were sent a test file that could not be read by PDF24 Creator because it is not correctly structured. However, such a file comes from a scanner program, which is widely used. For such a PDF file we have now made an extension, so that the PDF24 Creator can still read such a PDF.
Components updated:
QPDF has been updated to version 10.6.3
JRE has been updated to version 17.0.2

New in PDF24 Creator 10.8.0 (Feb 14, 2022)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.7.2 (Feb 8, 2022)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.7.1 (Jan 5, 2022)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.7.0 (Nov 15, 2021)

OCR: Problem with tesseract.exe fixed:
The tesseract.exe we used did not work correctly on some systems. Tesseract is responsible for recognizing the text in an image. We have now rebuilt tesseract.exe and used a new build flag which solves the problem. The new version should now run on the systems where it did not run before.
Image2Pdf: All EXIF orientations are supported:
EXIF can be used to control the orientation of an image file. In one of the last versions we added support for some of these options. We have now extended this further and all EXIF orientations are now supported. This means that images will be embedded in a PDF in correct orientation.
Toolbox: Some overlay icons were not displayed:
The tools "Extract Pages", "Remove Pages", "Rotate Pages", "Merge PDF" have icons over the page to make it clear to the user that he can interact with the page. These icons were not visible because the styles used were incorrect. The problem is solved.
Toolbox: Changed the layout of the file preview:
The layout of the file preview in the file selection box has been changed. In the new version, the file tools, the preview image, the file name and the metadata such as file size and number of pages are displayed better.
Toolbox: Preview images for PDFs are now generated:
In the toolbox, there is a file selection for most tools. In this file selection, the selected files are displayed. In this representation there is a preview image. Until now, preview images were only displayed for image files such as JPGs or PNGs. We have extended this and now a preview image is also generated for PDF files.
Toolbox: Enlarged overlay file preview added:
The thumbnails in the file selection box are quite small and not always easy to see. The user did not always have an easy time seeing if he had selected the right file and if it was aligned correctly. This is now better with the help of the new enlarged file preview. The enlarged file preview can be opened via the magnifying glass icon.
Toolbox: Do not convert files twice:
The toolbox automatically converts files to PDF format when the PDF format is needed for viewing. If the user subsequently creates the final PDF, then conversion is also required. Here we have improved so that now the previous conversion result is used. This way there is no need to convert twice.
Toolbox: New page mode icons in PDF Merge Tool:
The old PNG icons have been replaced and the icon font is used here so that the icons are displayed equally well on different screens.
Toolbox: Images in the "Images in PDF" tool can be rotated
The "Images to PDF" tool now offers the possibility to rotate images. For this purpose, there are two icons above the preview with which the alignment can be set. In the created PDF, the alignment is then set correctly.
Toolbox: EXIF orientation support built into the UI:
The user interface of the toolbox is HTML-based. For the display, the IE11 of Windows is currently still used. IE11 does not support EXIF by default. We have improved this and added EXIF support. This is especially important for the "Images in PDF" tool, so that the user can also see the correct orientation of the image and so that the user can rotate the image if the orientation is not correct.
Language files updated

New in PDF24 Creator 10.6.3 (Oct 27, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.6.1 (Oct 21, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.6.0 (Oct 11, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.5.0 (Oct 7, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.4.0 (Oct 1, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.3.0 (Sep 27, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.2.0 (Sep 15, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.1.1 (Aug 20, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.1.0 (Aug 16, 2021)

General:
Cloud print function removed:
This service has been discontinued by Google and can no longer be used. Therefore this function has been removed from PDF24 Creator.
Update buttons can be removed:
Update buttons can be removed in the user interface. This can be done via the configuration. The new option NoUpdateCheckBtns (DWORD32=[0,1]) is available for this purpose. Some companies have requested this feature.
Tray icon open tool can be set:
A new option has been added in the configuration to set the tray icon open tool. This is the option trayIcon.openTool [REG_SZ]. Values can currently be [toolbox, launcher, creator]. If you double click on the icon or select the open option from the context menu, the corresponding program will be opened.
NoKeepDocInfo option introduced:
The NoKeepDocInfo (DWORD=[0,1]) option can be used to set whether the metadata of a PDF should be kept from the source document or not. The default value is 0, so the data will be preserved. Note about custom output profiles: With the save profiles you can store your own metadata which should be used when a PDF is saved.
pdf24.exe:
Dependency on spooler removed:
This dependency is not strictly necessary and has been removed.
Code improvements:
The pdf24.exe has received extensive code changes, improvements and new options, which will hopefully help to better find potential further problems. Among other things, many more lines of code have also been added, which means that more information is written to the log files, which can be used to track the actions.
Automatic log files in temp folder:
The pdf24.exe now automatically creates log files in the TEMP folder. The output of pdf24.exe is redirected to these log files. These log files help us, for example, if there are problems. This can be turned off using the DWORD option backend.autoLog=0.
$owner variable when saving automatically:
The auto-save function now offers the placeholder variable $owner at the file name, folder and command, which stores the user name of the owner of the printed file or job.
Memory consumption at startup reduced:
Delayed loading of the language file can save 1 MB RAM per pdf24.exe process. The language file is only required when an interaction is made with the tray icon. This makes pdf24.exe start a little faster and saves RAM especially if there are many processes on a CITRIX farm.
Images to PDF:
Support for 8-bit Gray JPEGs:
When converting or embedding JPEG images in a PDF, 8-bit gray JPEG images are now also supported in PassThrough mode.
Support for CMYK JPEGs:
CMYK JPEG images can now also be embedded or converted, but these images are currently converted internally to RBG images beforehand.
Support for more image formats:
Some other image formats are now also supported, but they are converted to RGB JPGs before embedding them into the PDF.
GUI Framework:
Optimizations for faster GUI's:
Several other improvements to the GUI substructure have been incorporated, resulting in faster user interfaces.
New component for multiple selection option:
The multiple selection option is based on a list view with checkboxes. This new component is used in the OCR user interface.
Reader:
Zoom Type Button Click Fix:
Zoom type button click effect is sometimes not applied. The problem is fixed now.
Optimization when clicking on Next/Previous page:
Clicking on Next/Previous page sometimes moved the page up or down one pixel, which was a bit unattractive. This is now fixed.
Grayscale printing available:
Grayscale printing can be activated in the printer options. If this option is active, then the reader sends data to the printer in grayscale mode.
Automatically rotate PDF pages when printing:
PDF pages are now automatically rotated to match the orientation of the printed page.
Automatic scaling and positioning of pages during printing:
When printing, pages are now automatically scaled and centered better.
Fullscreen mode implemented:
The Reader now also has a fullscreen mode. This can be activated and deactivated via F11. Deactivation is also possible via the Escape key.
Launch features disabled:
Due to security considerations, some launch features in Reader that may be included in a PDF have been disabled.
Default printer options are now taken into account:
Users and admins can preset printer options. PDF24 Reader now uses these options as default settings when printing. This means that various settings do not have to be made again and again.
OCR:
User interface improved:
The OCR Tool user interface has been greatly improved. The layout is different, the font is better, there are new options and the window can be resized as well.
Option to rotate skewed pages (Deskew):
Scanned pages are often slightly skewed. PDF24 can now get this just right, which significantly improves OCR performance.
Automatically rotate pages implemented:
There is now an option to automatically rotate pages in the PDF based on the recognized text.
Option to remove the page background:
An option has also been added to remove the background of a page that is present, for example, due to the scanning process.
Supports files with rotated pages:
Rotated pages in PDF are now also better supported.
Supports multiple languages simultaneously:
In the GUI, the user can now mark multiple languages to be used for the OCR process. Due to the extension of the GUI lib, this feature has now become possible.
Displaying overlay errors:
Errors/exceptions when overlaying source page and recognized text are now displayed in the user interface. Problematic files can be sent to PDF24 so that we can analyze them.
Creator:
Improved behavior regarding the scrollbar of a file:
Improved the behavior of the horizontal scrollbar of a file. Clicking in the scroll track area sometimes did not behave correctly.
Toolbox:
Internet access could not be prevented:
Internet access in the toolbox could not be disabled. Some companies rely on this and so we have fixed this. The configuration value NoEmbeddedBrowser can be used to disable access.
PDF-LIB:
Support for empty streams during decoding:
Added support for empty streams during decoding. Some PDFs have such a case and PDF24 could not process them. This has now been improved.
File preview from Creator and Assistant:
Deadlock fixed:
In a certain constellation of instructions (zoom, rotate) a deadlock could occur and the GUI stopped responding. The problem is fixed.
Bug fixed when scrolling:
Fixed an error when scrolling the page preview. A page could be scrolled horizontally even though there was no scroll area at all.
Preview size optimized:
The default preview size has been optimized a bit. The size now depends on the screen size and hopefully this will lead to less manual resizing. Previously the size was fixed after opening the preview.
Scroll functions and behavior improved:
The scroll functions and the resulting behavior have been revised. This now works much better and is also more precise.
Dependent components:
Dependent components updated:
QPDF has been updated to version 10.3.2. Ghostscript to version 9.5.4. The JRE to version 16.0.2. Also a custom WxWidgets version is currently used, which can use default values of a printer. The code was provided to the WxWidgets project.

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.12 (Aug 16, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.11 (Feb 19, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.10 (Feb 17, 2021)

Mediabox rotation improved:
The Mediabox rotation is used for overlaying content. Improvements had to be made here because problems occurred with certain PDF files. The function now also supports Mediabox definitions where the lower left coordinate is not in the origin. This is quite rare, but some PDFs use this possibility.
Use of metadata when converting images to PDF:
Metadata is now also evaluated when converting images to PDF. The orientation that can be stored in the metadata is used here. Based on the determined orientation, the rotation of the page in the PDF is adjusted accordingly. In this way, the user no longer has to correct the orientation afterwards. Especially with photos that come from smartphones, the orientation is often incorrect. This improvement now simplifies the conversion of images into PDF files.
Direct embedding of JPG images in a PDF:
JPEG images are now embedded in the PDF without re-encoding. This often makes the PDF file size much smaller and the quality remains the same. This behavior can be controlled via the registry setting Img2PDFPassThroughJPEGImages (DWORD [0|1]).
Online converter block removed from the settings area:
The online converter block has been removed from the Settings UI, as this option is also available from the features area in the settings. The duplication is not necessary here.
Problem with transformation matrices fixed:
When calculating transformation matrices used in PDF files, two errors have been fixed which caused problems with certain PDF files. The new calculations are now correct.
Fixed script error in the toolbox:
We fixed some script errors in the toolbox that occurred when using certain languages such as Dutch. We had to make some changes and add extensions so that the translated text does not cause problems with the scripts.
Fixed a script error when displaying grouped results in the toolbox:
The toolbox shows the results of an operation grouped if this is necessary. When viewing these groups, a script error occurred with certain input files. The reason for the problem was the file name. Filenames with certain characters caused this problem. We have investigated and fixed this issue.
Three untranslated text translated in the toolbox:
In the toolbox there were still 3 untranslated texts. The texts were displayed in German. Here we have improved so that these texts now also use the translated version.

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.9 (Feb 9, 2021)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.8 (Jan 22, 2021)

Toolbox saves last window placement:
The toolbox now saves the last used window size and position on the screen. This way, the user can better adapt the application to the hardware he is using. Especially with large screens, some users do not want a maximized display.
Tray icon Open action improved:
The tray icon can be used to open the PDF24 via the icon context menu or via a double-click. This behavior has been improved. If the toolbox is activated, then the toolbox is opened. If the Toolbox is not activated, then the older launcher is opened instead.
Some brush types disabled for tools in the toolbox:
For the Edit, Blacken and Annotate tools in the Toolbox, we have disabled some brush types because they do not run correctly in the offline version. Here we need to see how to switch these brush types so that they also work in the offline version.
Importing signatures into the signing tool improved:
Signatures that are available as images can be imported into the tool. With large images there were problems with the display, so it was difficult to import them. Here we have improved so that this is now easier.
More functions can be deactivated in the toolbox:
More instructions have been added in the Toolbox to disable some tools there. This can be done via the Windows Registry. The registry entries have the following form: feature.toolbox.[blacken | ...] = [0 | 1] (DWORD). For example, if you want to disable the blacken tool, then set feature.toolbox.blacken = 0.
Language files updated:
Problem with updater fixed
The updater did not evaluate an instruction correctly, which caused problems with the detection of updates. This problem has been fixed in this version.
Reader cannot overwrite currently opened file:
In Reader we have built in a protection so that the currently opened file cannot be overwritten. If you wanted to do this in older versions, then there were problems with saving and the newly saved file was empty.
Filter options in the toolbox have made disabled tools visible:
In the toolbox, there are several filters that the user can use to display tools. One of the filters is the one for recently used tools. Furthermore, there is the possibility to deactivate certain functions throughout the program, e.g. if they should not be available in a company. However, the use of the filters caused that these deactivated functions were made visible. This problem is now fixed.

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.6 (Dec 10, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.5 (Dec 9, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.4 (Dec 3, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.3 (Nov 24, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.2 (Nov 18, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.1 (Nov 16, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 10.0.0 (Nov 12, 2020)

PDF24 Toolbox added:
The biggest new feature in PDF24 Creator 10 is the toolbox. The new toolbox contains many PDF tools and which makes them as easily accessible as possible. With the online PDF Tools from PDF24 we have seen that users find very simple PDF Tools great. As a result, we have constantly expanded and improved the online tools. Our goal is to offer all PDF Tools as online and offline versions in the PDF24 Creator. Since the development of the online tools is a bit faster than the development of the offline tools, there were many tools online, but they were not yet available offline. This discrepancy will now be eliminated with the PDF24 Creator 10. The new PDF24 Creator 10 gets with the toolbox all the tools that are also available online and we are proud of that. Users who cannot or do not want to use online tools for data protection reasons can now find all tools as offline version in PDF24 Creator 10.
Paths in the registry changed:
The PDF24 Creator settings are located in the Windows Registry. With version 10 we have adapted the paths where the PDF24 Creator stores the settings. The old paths were historical, but did not contain the term PDF24, which has always been a bit unsightly. Previously the settings were saved under "SOFTWARE/PDFPrint". In Version 10, "SOFTWARE/PDF24" is now used instead. Attempts have been made in the past to change this, but so far it has never worked. The PDF24 Creator 10 is a major update, so this point is now included here.
Update to Ghostscript 9.53:
The PDF24 Creator 10 now includes the latest version of Ghostscript. In Ghostscript itself there have been many changes in the last revisions and we were advised to update to the current version. We have done this and we have adapted the PDF24 Creator to the new Ghostscript version.
PDF24 Creator 10 is now built for 64-bit systems:
On the one hand, we have been asked about it several times, but on the other hand it is necessary for some new components to work properly with the PDF24 Creator. All parts of the PDF24 Creator are now x64-compatible. Dependent components and programs like Ghostscript are also delivered in the 64-bit version. This means that all parts of the PDF24 Creator are designed for x64 systems
Screen Capture Tool improved:
The Screen Capture Tool can now also save to a file. This new mode is now available in the user interface. The tool also saves recently used settings so that you can take a screenshot more quickly next time.
OCR tool usable via command line:
Using the command line you can now also detect text in files. The command line interface for the OCR tool is described in the new PDF24 Creator Manual. Some users have asked for such a solution and we have included this feature in version 10.
PDF24 Creator Manual is now available:
With the PDF24 Creator 10 there is now also a manual for the first time, which contains a lot of information about the PDF24 Creator. This information is especially interesting for administrators. The manual will be further improved and maintained.
Fixed a problem with the generation of PDF/A-2b files:
We have fixes a problem with the generation of PDF/A-2b files. Validation of generated files did not pass tests. This problem is fixed now.

New in PDF24 Creator 9.2.2 (Sep 30, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.2.1 (Sep 7, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.2.0 (Aug 13, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.1.1 (May 15, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.1.0 (Apr 24, 2020)

OCR: Option for automatic saving in the same directory:
With this new option, the OCR tool is able to automatically save processed files in the directory where the file is located. This option can be very useful when processing many files.
OCR: Option for automatic saving in an output directory:
With this new option, the OCR tool is able to automatically save processed files in a directory. This option can be very useful when processing many files.
OCR: Skip documents and pages with text:
With this new option, the OCR tool is able to skip files or pages that already contain text. In this way, files are not saved with duplicate text.
OCR: Number, how many files are processed in parallel, is adjustable:
This new option allows the user to set how many files should be processed in parallel. In this way, the user can decide how heavily his computer may be used.
OCR: Security prompts for unsaved files:
When files are removed or when the application is closed and if there are unsaved files, a confirmation prompt is displayed.
OCR: Menu icon for each file:
At the end of each line of a file entry there is a menu icon with further options for the file.
OCR: Show recognized text via the menu icon:
The menu icon now contains an option to display the recognized text. This makes it easier to see which text has been recognized.
OCR: Error message if language information cannot be loaded:
Language files and language information are downloaded from the Internet due to their size. If this fails, an appropriate message is displayed. Buttons for retrying or canceling are available.
OCR: Integration of a cache, for faster reprocessing:
The cache makes a subsequent OCR process for the same file complete faster. This is especially useful if the options are changed later and the OCR process is restarted.
OCR: Faster processing:
File processing is much faster with this new version than before. Sometimes files are processed almost twice as fast.
OCR: Tesseract Update to version 4.1.1:
The new version of Tesseract fixes problems and brings improvements so that these new features also benefit the user.
OCR: GUI revised:
The GUI is now slightly larger so that all new elements can be displayed.
The options area uses a flow layout to allow more options to be used in this area without wasting too much space.
There is a menu icon for each file with additional functions.
Icons in the toolbar were revised.
General: PDF Lib improvements:
Further improvements have also been made to the PDF Lib, which is used internally in PDF24 for many tasks.
General: Password Cache to improve decryption of many files:
Entered passwords are stored internally in the open program and will be used automatically when further documents are loaded. If several documents have the same password, then the password does not have to be entered again for these files.
Settings: Problem with duplicate entries solved:
There is a Reload button in the settings area PDF Printer, Automatic Save, Profiles. Using this button has resulted in duplicate entries in the selection box. This problem is solved.
Creator: Automatic folder display when loading a file via command line:
If a file is loaded in the Creator via command line, the folder where the file is located is displayed in the file explorer.
Reader: Fixed problem with date display in file information area:
The minute in the date was not correct due to an incorrect formatting specification. This issue has been fixed.
Reader: Fixed problems when loading files with special characters in the name:
PDF files with special characters in the name could not be loaded on some systems. There was a problem with the character encoding which caused these files not to be found. This problem has been fixed.

New in PDF24 Creator 9.0.6 (Apr 7, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.0.5 (Apr 6, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.0.4 (Jan 23, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.0.3 (Jan 15, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.0.2 (Jan 13, 2020)

New in PDF24 Creator 9.0.0 (Oct 18, 2019)

Rotation option for paper and overlay available:
We've added a rotation option to the Paper and Overlays option block that lets you customize the paper or overlay page orientation according to the actual document.
Option to use the save file name chooser dialog in auto save mode:
This option can be used to let the user decide where to place the current file in automatic save mode. If this option is enabled and the PDF printer is configured in automatic save mode, a dialog box appears for selecting the file name in which the user must select the save path.
Merge with zipper method available in the Creator:
There is now also the new merge with zipper method available. This new merge mode merges page after page (page one from first file, then page one from second file, ...). This tool is added to the toolbar of the app.
Function to reverse the page order now available:
The Creator has a new function to reverse the page order of a document. The function is available in the context menu of a file that was opened there. Right-click an open file or click the new menu icon, and then click the appropriate menu item. This tool is very useful for scanned documents to reverse the page order and get the backs in the correct order. This is necessary for the new zipper merge, for example.
Document toolbar of the Creator now has a burger menu item:
This burger menu item can be used to show the context menu of a file.
Re-enabled the internal file explorer of the Creator:
We have reactivated the creator's internal explorer and added some optimizations. The file explorer can be activated or deactivated from the main menu of the program.
Copy/Paste improvements in the PDF reader for form fields:
Copy/Paste could not be used in older versions of the Reader for form fields. This is now possible and you can use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V in form fields.
PDF printer file name detection improved:
We have improved the code that is responsible for recognizing the filename and path of the printed files. The new algorithm is slightly better.
Replacement of special characters in file names:
We found some more places where special characters in the filename were not replaced. This could lead to unsaved files or unwanted behavior. Invalid file name characters are now also replaced for files attached to a mail to avoid problems here.
Overlay and paper method improved
We are now using a new algorithm to combine the contents of the files (digital paper and actual document), which gives better results under different conditions. The old method can be used by setting overlay.mode = "old" in the Windows registry settings.
Translaton file updates
Fix for a special PDF auto rotate pages bug:
We found this special case that could lead to incorrectly rotated pages in PDF files and we fixed it.

New in PDF24 Creator 8.9.1 (Jul 10, 2019)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.9.0 (Jun 11, 2019)

Common: Format options dialog visually improved:
The format options dialog is a larger component with dozens of options. Here we have room for improvement. We have optically improved the page tree on the left side and optimized some paddings and margins to make working with this component easier.
Common: User settings key name changes of the assistant and creator:
There are some options in the settings related to the PDF printer assistant and the creator. We have changed the names of these settings to the new format we introduced in other components, so that they now use the new format with a prefix followed by a period.
Common: Single instance lock of the PDF24 Updater:
We have implemented a single instance lock for the PDF24 Updater to prevent the Updater from opening twice. It does not make sense to have multiple instances of this application open.
Common: More options available in the settings U:
We have added some more options to the preferences interface. You can now also configure a fixed save directory used by the PDF printer assistant (assistant.fixedSaveDir) and you can tell the PDF printer assistant to use the name of the first file in the list when merging to a single PDF (assistant.joinFilesUseFirstName).
Common: Auto rotate pages are now enabled by default when converting PS files to PDF:
PS files normally comes from the PDF printer, which we convert internally into the PDF format. Printing applications often adapt the orientation of pages to the standard paper formats, resulting in incorrectly rotated pages. For this reason, we have by default turned on the option to automatically rotate pages during conversion.
Common: MAPI mail interface now creates modeless dialogs:
The MAPI mail interface now creates modeless dialogs so that the user is able to work with other windows. The outlook mail interface has already used this mode.
Common: Mail interface selection bug fixed:
There was a bug in the mail interface selection code that wrongly switched back to the MAPI interface if the PDF24 mail interface was disabled through the settings.
Common: Reduced wait times of command processor:
We could reduce waiting times of the shell command processor, which is responsible for calling other applications like Ghostscript. This should in some cases lead to slightly faster results.
Common: PDF printer auto save command templates:
We have extended the PDF printer settings user interface page. We have added a selection box to select PDF printer auto save command templates to make it easier to set up a PDF printer configured in auto save mode.
Common: Option NoReader=1 did not work correctly:
With the NoReader registry setting you can control whether the PDF24 Reader is visible in the PDF24 Creator or not. This option did not work correctly in previous versions. This has been fixed.
Common: Fix for a PDF security settings issue in case of an empty owner password:
We have found a bug in the code that is responsible for applying the PDF security settings. An empty owner password leads to a small problem.
Common: Update to QPDF 8.4.1:
We had opened a ticket at the QPDF project because QPDF did not handle umlauts correctly in file names. This has been improved in QPDF 8.4.1. Internally we now use this version.
Common: Update to Ghostscript 9.27:
We had written a bug report to the Ghostscript team because older versions of Ghostscript had problems with some PDF files. The issue was font and color changes during PDF file reprocessing. The new version fixes this.
Common: Optimized PDF password encoding:
We have optimized the PDF password encoding when locking or unlocking pdf files to fix potential encoding issues with some readers.
Assistant: Option for fixed save directory:
The assistant now understands an option to use a fixed save directory when saving files to disk. This is the "assistant.fixedSaveDir" option that you can also configure via the settings interface.
Assistant: Remembers last save directory:
The assistant now remembers the last save directory, but only if the "assistant.fixedSaveDir" option is not used and if no directory is associated with the current file.
Assistant: Special case for files stored in the temporary files directory:
If the directory of a file is TEMP, then we do not set this directory as initial folder in the file selection dialog.

New in PDF24 Creator 8.8.2 (Mar 4, 2019)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.8.1 (Feb 28, 2019)

PDF24 PDF printer Windows service optimized:
We have optimized the PDF24 PDF printer Windows service. The aim was to make it more robust, as some users have reported problems. Some optimizations have been implemented and we hope that this service will now run even more reliably than before.
OCR: Configuration implemented to use only installed language files:
In version 8.8.1 the OCR tool was extended by an option, so that only locally installed language files may be used. This prevents the reloading of language files from the internet. This option is advantageous for companies, because in this way the individual users do not load the same language files into their user profile, but there is a central place with these files. This option has not yet been documented and if you are interested, please submit a request in the PDF24 help area.
OCR: Using the single file save dialog when there is only one file in the list:
If only one file was processed in the OCR tool and the result is then saved, then the single file save dialog is used here. This behavior is more user-friendly.
Compress: Using the single file save dialog when there is only one file in the list:
If only one file was processed in the PDF compress tool and the result is then saved, then the single file save dialog is also used here. This increases user-friendliness.
OCR: Suffix for file names when saving:
When saving files in the OCR tool, a file name suffix can now be added automatically. The suffix can be stored in the settings under the name "ocr.saveFileSuffix". So far there is no option in the settings area, so that you have to insert this value manually in the Windows registry.
OCR: DPI option now available as parameter:
On the OCR tool, the DPI option is now visible and can be used to better tune the OCR process. By default, the recommended 300 DPI value is set.
OCR: DPI and profile options are remembered:
DPI and profile values of the OCR tool are now saved in the user settings and restored the next time the OCR tool is started.
Compress: Suffix for file names when saving:
When saving files in the PDF shrink tool, a file name suffix can now also be added automatically. The suffix can be stored in the settings under the name "compress.saveFileSuffix". So far there is no option in the settings area, so that you have to insert this value manually in the Windows registry.
PDF Merge: Optimized profile selection dialog in file tools:
The recently added Skip button in the profile selection dialog has been removed. Instead, a new profile was inserted, which implements the "Merge only" function.
QPDF: Upgrade to version 8.4.0:
Improvements of the QPDF version 8.4.0 are partly included in the PDF24 Creator. Necessary adjustments in PDF24 Creator due to changes in QPDF have been implemented.
Security settings are now supported more finely by QPDF. With this we can now also use these with finer granularity.
QPDF: Status output is now visible in the debug console:
With these changes the output of QPDF can now be viewed in the debug console. This will help you to find possible problems.
Unlock Tool: Password no longer contained in the command line:
Removing passwords uses QPDF. QPDF is started and the password is transferred. This password is no longer passed on the command line, but via a different way, so that the password can no longer be viewed from the command line.
PDF24 Reader: Fixed issues opening protected PDFs:
An attempt is now made to use passwords with different encodings to load a password-protected PDF file. This helps when loading PDF files with incorrect password encoding.
Option to keep annotations enabled by default:
To ensure that links and other annotations contained in PDF files are not lost during merging, annotations must be retained. This option is now enabled by default.
PDF reduction tool structurally revised:
The user interface of the compression tool is now better separated from the actual shrinking process. In this way, some functions behave better.
OCR Tool structurally reworked:
The user interface of the OCR tool is now also better separated from the actual processing process. Here, too, some functions behave better in this way.
OCR and compression tool set initial storage folder to input file folder:
When saving individual files, the initial folder in the file selection dialog is set to the folder of the input file. This behavior is somewhat more user friendly.
PDF Merge: Solved problem with rotated pages:
A problem has been discovered and fixed that occurred when merging PDF files with rotated pages. Here it came partly to a wrong orientation of pages.
Creator: Solved problems loading locked PDFs:
A correction for loading certain PDF files that did not pass the unlock step correctly has been added to the Creator.
Improved deletion of temporary files in the creator:
Deleting temporary files in Creator sometimes failed. If, for example, a file is still being processed, it cannot be deleted. We have optimized here and adapted processes so that the temporary files are also deleted in these situations.
Solved problems closing the PDF compression tool:
Closing the PDF Compression Tool has been improved because some temporary files were not deleted in rare cases and could crash on very rare occasions.
Problems with closing the OCR tool fixed:
Fixes a problem with not removing temporary files in the OCR tool when the tool is closed before all files have been processed.
Umlauts in the file name were problematic:
QPDF is used to remove passwords from PDF files. The support of umlauts in file names is not yet well supported by QPDF under Windows. In the PDF24 Creator we have made changes to avoid problems in this context.
Fixes a problem when printing large files on the PDF printer:
If large files are printed on the PDF printer and the print job is larger than 2 gigabytes, then the assistant was not opened and the large temporary file of the print job remained in the file system and was not deleted. This problem has now been fixed and the print job can now be larger than 2 GB.
OCR: Text layer was not oriented correctly with some PDF files"
This version brings a correction for rotated text layers for pages that are already rotated in input files. Here we did not adjust the text layer correctly to the rotation of the source page. This problem has been fixed.

New in PDF24 Creator 8.8.0 (Feb 13, 2019)

OCR component added:
An OCR component has been finalized and integrated into the PDF24 Creator. This component lets you recognize text in scanned files and images and save the text information in the PDF so that the PDF is searchable and text can be copied. This feature greatly extends the possibilities offered by the PDF24 Creator.
Supports multiple languages that can be loaded on demand to avoid inflating the installer unnecessarily.
Supports the use of profiles to apply further processing after text recognition, e.g. to save as PDF/A.
Multiple files can be processed in parallel.
The status and remaining processing time is displayed.
PDF Reader: Go to page area feature optimized:
The X-axis is now also set correctly, so that the jumped area in the window is now always visible.
PDF password removal with timeout:
If a password cannot be removed or if the component that removes the passwords no longer responds, the function will abort after a certain time and return an error.
Save profile for the quality level HIGH added:
The quality level HIGH lies between GOOD and BEST quality. Now there are 5 standard quality levels.
Better colors when choosing a memory profile:
In the GUI component, where you can choose a save profile, the colors of the links have been optimized to make them better readable.
Right click in the header area of the file list of the PDF compress tool has opened an invalid context menu:
The context menu applies to file entries in the file list, but is invalid for the header area. This has been improved.
Profile application can be disabled when merging files into a PDF using the file tools:
If you only want to merge PDF files without reprocessing, you can now skip the profile application. A corresponding button is now available in the user interface. The file tools can be accessed e.g. via the PDF24 file context menu in Windows Explorer.
Improvements in the PDF Printer assistant:
The communication with the PDF compression tool has been improved. If the tool is already open, the new file is processed there and not in a new instance.
A certain status window now displays a correct file name instead of a temporary one.
A memory leak has been fixed, but this was hardly noticed because the application is usually closed after saving a file.
Many minor improvements under the hood:
In this version, many minor improvements have been incorporated into components that are not visible from the outside.
Temporary file was not deleted in PDF compression tool in a certain state:
There was a case with the PDF compression tool where a temporary file was not deleted. This problem is fixed.
Sporadic crash of the compression tool:
Closing the PDF compression tool could crash in certain situations. This was repaired and the problems were solved.

New in PDF24 Creator 8.7.2 (Dec 18, 2018)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.7.1 (Dec 4, 2018)

Info window added to sidebar in PDF Reader:
The sidebar in PDF24 Reader has been given an info window that displays general information, security information, document info information, metadata information and fonts for the opened PDF. With it we deliver a feature which is gladly seen and which we also gladly use.
Sidebar in PDF Reader now uses icons instead of tabs:
The sidebar in PDF24 Reader no longer uses tabs, but icons, similar to Adobe Reader. These are more flexible and we can use much more elements in the sidebar than before. A new element has already been mentioned above and more elements will follow here to make the PDF24 Reader even better.
The openwithprogids registry entry can be disabled by flag:
Since version 8.7.0 the PDF24 Creator contains a slim PDF Reader. The installer registers this reader in Windows. For this an openwithprogids entry is added to the file type PDF. This entry can now be suppressed by a flag on the command line. With the EXE installation program this is achieved by the argument /NoAddOpenWithProgIds. For the MSI package you have to use the statement ADDOPENWITHPROGIDS=NO.
Adobe Reader no longer displays PDF24 signature:
Adobe Reader no longer displayed the signature created with PDF24, although it was correct. This version fixes the problem and the signature is visible again.
Length of font map names reduced:
The length of fontmap names must not exceed 100 characters in Ghostscript, otherwise errors will occur. The fontmap generator has been adapted accordingly so that only fonts with a shorter name are included.
PDF Printer Assistant was not always started in the foreground:
The PDF printer assistant was partially not started in the foreground in the last version. We have added another statement to bring the wizard to the foreground.
Delivery of Ghostscript 9.26:
Ghostscript 9.26 is recommended by the Ghostscript creators, because there are security problems in the previous versions, which will be fixed with version 9.26. Since we always pay attention to security, we now deliver this version.

New in PDF24 Creator 8.7.0 (Nov 14, 2018)

Feature:
PDF24 Reader completed and integrated
We have completed our PDF24 Reader and created a first version. The PDF24 Reader is a component for displaying PDF files. It is a slim and resource-saving PDF reader that can quickly display PDF files. This PDF Reader can be used as a replacement for other software. A PDF Reader was still missing. Now it's here and it is no longer necessary to install additional software to view PDF files. The PDF24 Reader fits seamlessly into PDF24. The PDF24 Reader currently offers the following features:
Open, view, save and print PDF files
Different display modes such as one page, two pages, two pages and cover page
Page preview and page tree
Navigational elements
Zoom in, zoom out and rotate pages
Search in document
Selecting and copying text
Creation of snapshots
Resource-saving and without unnecessary ballast
Feature:
Remove PDF password tool added to file tools
The file tools have got a new tool to remove password protection from PDF files. The prerequisite is, of course, that the password is known. So this tool is not there to crack passwords. You can open the file tools via the PDF24 Launcher or via the Windows Explorer file context menu.
Feature: Loading password-protected PDF files
This feature was requested by some users and here it is now. Loading and using password-protected PDF files is supported in various areas with this version. This includes the Creator, the Assistant and the Compression tool. Whenever a password-protected PDF is used, a password entry field appears to remove the PDF protection and to process the PDF further.
Optimization: Many new icons
Many components of the software have received new and uniform icons that look better and more modern. The sub-components include the Launcher, the PDF printer assistant and the file tools.
Optimization: Improved GUI rendering and bug fixes
The component rendering the UI has also been improved. The new component is now faster and behaves better and faster when displaying elements. The difference is noticeable, especially with larger elements such as the Save As profile area.
Optimization: New toolchain in use
Internally we have updated our toolchain and now compile with current compilers. This makes some components faster and the software more fluid in some areas. With the decision to no longer support XP, we were able to take this step.
Optimization: Installer extended
There was also some work on the installer. The PDF24 Reader, which is also registered in Windows, has been integrated to create a link to the PDF file type. The two Print and PrintTo Shell commands for the PDF24 Reader are also created. On the command line, the /NOREADERREG argument can be used to prevent this registration if this is not desired.
There is also a nice and modern PDF icon which is used for the PDF file type if the PDF24 Reader is the standard software for PDF.
Optimization: QPDF component updated to version 8.2.1
The new version of QPDF contains some updates, which are indirectly included in the PDF24 Creator.
Optimization: Compression tool now shrinks PDFs even better
The PDF compression tool is now even better at shrinking PDF files. This makes PDF files even smaller than before. We have also adjusted the compression parameters to get even better and more expectable results. In the UI of the tool we removed the info icons and connected the tooltips directly to the form elements.
Optimization: Many more smaller optimizations
There are a number of other smaller optimizations, which don't all have to be mentioned here. That would make the list very long. Version 8.7.0 is a major update with many minor improvements.
Windows XP support is no longer guaranteed
Many software vendors have already done so, and so have we. Windows XP is no longer supported from version 8.7.0. Users of Windows XP should therefore use a version smaller than 8.7.0. With this change, we are now able to run a bit faster because we no longer have to worry about whether certain elements are present in XP or not.

New in PDF24 Creator 8.6.1 (Sep 17, 2018)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.6.0 (Aug 16, 2018)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.5.0 (Aug 16, 2018)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.4.2 (Jun 28, 2018)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.4.1 (Feb 27, 2018)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.4.0 (Dec 18, 2017)

Optimization: Messages in PDF printer Windows Service improved
The PDF24 PDF printer Windows Service has been improved. In the event of an error, this should help to find errors better. The messages are now better displayed in the Windows Event Viewer.
BugFix: Wizard is not started when the mail feature is disabled
If the mail feature was disabled in the settings, the wizard could not start anymore. This problem is fixed.
Optimization: Under Windows XP, the option 'Current user' is selected by default in the settings
Under Windows XP, there is still the older permission management and there, an admin always has the elevated rights in an application. In newer Windows versions you have to start explicitly with elevated privileges. We use this distinction to make a default selection between 'All Users' and 'Current User'. Since this is not possible under Windows XP, 'Current user' is always selected here by default.
Feature: Configurable memory profiles for all users
Save As profiles can now be stored for all users in the HKLM area of the registry. These profiles are then available to all users. A user cannot change such a profile. The cross-user profile location is located under the HKLMSOFTWAREWOW6432NodePDFPrintProfilesfo registry path.
Be careful when copying user profiles. The 'pdf-ownerPass' and 'pdf-userPass' properties are encrypted in the user profile, so that only the user can see the passwords. With profiles in the HKLM area we cannot reverse this encryption and therefore the passwords must be stored unencrypted there.
Feature: CropBox/TrimBox can be used
Version 8.4.0 comes with a Crop function. This allows you to set the CropBox and/or TrimBox in the PDF document. In the Save As dialog you can define the corresponding parameters in the crop section independent of the paper format. It is now possible to add crop for the print shop with this new feature. The distances to the paper format edges are configured. X mm are removed from the edges of the current paper format and stored as CropBox/TrimBox in the PDF.

New in PDF24 Creator 8.3.0 (Dec 6, 2017)

Optimization:
PDF24 Windows Service error behavior configured
The PDF24 Windows Service is now better configured. The error behavior options are used to restart the service when problems occur. This migration is intended to fix problems experienced by some users who have reported problems with a broken PDF printer. The changeover is intended to ensure error-free operation.
Feature:
Screen Capture function can be disabled
Some companies would like to disable the Screen Capture feature, but this has not been possible before. Now you can deactivate this function. To do this, the DWORD option NoScreenCapture=1 must be set in the registry or the corresponding option must be deactivated in the settings on the Features page.
Feature:
Sort function in the assistant and file tools
In the icon bar above the file list in the assistant and file tools there is now also an icon for sorting the files in the list. This function is useful in certain cases.
Feature:
Elements of the FileNameErasements can be separated by : and |
Normally, a line entry was used to enter the elements of the FileNameErasements. It was possible to enter a text per line, which is removed from the determined file name via the printer interface, in order to remove texts transmitted by the printing program as a prefix or suffix.
The settings are in the registry and the input of lines can lead to problems, because some configuration tools do not support this. In order to solve this problem, the input can now be done using the separator : and also |. These separators are now also supported in this version.
Optimization:
UI Design Updates
In the UI design there were some optimizations in this version to adapt the buttons, check boxes and radio buttons to the Windows design. We think that users will find this better.
Optimization:
Save button in profile dialog now shows successful saving
When saving profiles in the Save As dialog box, there was no feedback of a successful saving when using the Save button. Here we have optimized something. The button changes the color to green for a short moment. This then gives the user the feedback that the storage has taken place.
Feature:
Default profiles can be selected in Save As dialog
Until now, it was not possible to select standard profiles in Save As dialog and load them. This version brings this feature and the default profiles can be selected next to the user profiles.
Feature:
User profiles are now supported in server mode when saving automatically
If it is not possible to save in the user context during server operation, the user profile cannot be loaded from the registry of the user. We have made improvements here. User profiles are now possible if they are specified in the settings area of the software. The settings pane loads the user profile when it is saved and stores it in the printer configuration so that the profile can be used when it is automatically saved in server mode. If you change the user profile in the user, you have to reopen the settings as an admin and save the printer configuration so that the changes take effect.
Feature:
Option to block overwriting of PDF printer settings
In the PDF printer options there is now a parameter to prevent the user from overwriting the PDF printer settings. This option is only visible if the settings pane has been opened as administrator. If this option is set, a user cannot overwrite the PDF printer settings. A corresponding message is displayed to the user.
Feature:
Language can be stored centrally in the HKLM area
A language can now also be stored centrally in the program configuration in the HKLM area. This is possible with the new settings area. This language is then used as the default language. This avoids the determination of the user's language based on the user profile.
Feature:
Auto Save option to save under a specific user
The configuration for automatic saving to a PDF printer now also allows you to specify a user for automatic saving. This is useful if only a special user has the necessary rights to save. If you use this option, the pdf24.exe has to run under this special user, so that the PDF24 printer service can forward print jobs to this user.
Optimization:
UI design updates in the settings interface
There were some updates in the preferences interface to improve the design. The Apply button is now also visualized to show the user that the settings have been applied successfully.
BugFix:
Layout Engine bug fixed
The Layout Engine had an error in a calculation, which led to distortion of the interface under certain circumstances, especially when modifying the windows in size. The problem is fixed. Some of the user interfaces are now even more fluid.
Feature:
Add Profile and Reload Profile buttons in the settings on the Auto Save page
In addition to the profile selection box, there are now also new buttons with which you can create a new profile and reload the profiles in the selection list. In this way, you have quick access to the profiles and can create new ones and use a newly created profile.
Feature:
Settings can now be made for all users or only for the current user
In the settings interface, there is a new selection box at the bottom of the page, which allows you to control who should use the settings. 'All users' and 'Current user' are available for selection. This way you can set settings for all users or only for the current user. The 'All Users' option is only available if the current user has opened the settings as administrator. In the title of the window you can see whether the settings are open as admin. The word ADMIN is added to the window title.
Feature:
New features page in the settings area
In the settings area there is a new page where you can activate and deactivate features of the software. With this page you now have a central place to quickly and easily activate or deactivate certain features. Previously, this could only be done via various settings in the registry.
Feature:
Mail function can be switched off via the settings
In the settings in the Features area you can now also switch off the mail function completely. For example, if a company does not want this option, then there is now an option.
Feature:
Option to delete erroneous print jobs
In the Features pane, you can also enable an option to have faulty print jobs removed by the PDF24 Windows Printer Service to prevent them from blocking other print jobs. Sometimes it may occur that a print job is incorrect and blocks other print jobs. If you do not want to worry about faulty print jobs, you can use this option to remove them.
Feature:
Delayed bring an application to the foreground as an option
Delayed bring an application to the foreground can be disabled in the Features section of the Preferences. The delay ensures that an application comes to the foreground after a certain time after new files arrive, so that the user recognizes the new files and knows which application has received the files. If you don't want this feature, you can now disable it.
Optimization: Updates in many language files

New in PDF24 Creator 8.2.4 (Nov 1, 2017)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.2.3 (Sep 14, 2017)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.2.0 (Jul 5, 2017)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.1.3 (Apr 11, 2017)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.1.2 (Apr 5, 2017)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.1.1 (Mar 31, 2017)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.1.0 (Feb 23, 2017)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.0.4 (Dec 20, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.0.3 (Dec 15, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 8.0.2 (Nov 15, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.9.0 (Jul 5, 2016)

Feature: CTRL+V support within the Assistant and compression tool:
The Assistant and the compression tool now supports CTRL+V to add files. Drag & drop support was already available in older version and CTRL+V is now a second option.
Feature: Compression tool now accepts all file types:
The compression tool now accepts all file types and not only PDF. Everything what can be converted to a PDF file can be compressed with that tool. If a file is not a PDF file then the compression tool converts the file first and compresses afterwards. Users do no longer need to do that manually.
Feature: Compression tool added to the assistant:
We have added the compression tool to the assistant so that you can send the printed PDF file directly the the compression tool to tune the size of the PDF file.
Feature: A file can be dropped to the PDF24 Launcher:
A file can now be dropped to the PDF24 Launcher. The Launcher then sends the file to the Creator where you can do something with the file.
Feature: Config option EmailInterface can be used in the HKLM config section:
The config key EmailInterface can now be globally set in the application config section under the registry path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPDFPrint and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodePDFPrint respectively. It's a bit easier for companies to set the option there instead of setting it for every user separately.
Feature: Extended the printer installer tool:
We have extended the PDF printer installer application. We have added two new commands to install a driver only and to set a config of an existing PDF printer. We have also added a fax config profile which is now used for the fax printer which should improve fax results.
Improvement: New Windows Explorer context menu extension:
We have implemented a new shell file context menu extension. We no longer use the cascading file context menu. When you open the context menu in your Windows Explorer you will see the PDF24 menu entry. When you hit that menu entry then a special PDF24 GUI opens where you can select a tool to run. This new mechanism is better for the PDF24 Creator. We are now a bit more flexible, we do not fall under the Windows limitations and extensions are easier to add.
Improvement: PDF printer description improved:
We have improved the PDF printer description to fix custom paper size and orientation issues. We have also added new paper formats.
Improvement: Improved loading of multiple files within the creator:
We have overworked the multiple file loading feature in the creator. The creator no longer pops up after each file loaded. Only the last loaded file brings the creator to the foreground so that you know when the last file is finished. The creator can now work in the background and you can do other things in the meantime.
Improvement: Author no longer automatically added to a PDF:
When you save a file with the Save As dialog you can set document information like author, title and keywords. The document information section can be enabled and disabled. If this section was disabled, the created PDF file often contained an automatically generated author field based on the windows user name. We have modified that behavior and we no longer use that automatically generated author information.
Improvement: Auto rotate pages option are made more intelligent:
The auto rotate pages option of the Save As dialog is no longer always enabled by default when you save a PDF file with the Creator. This option was enabled by default in earlier versions, but in some situations it's better to disable that. A lot of users forgot to disable that option after they have applied a custom rotation and so they got a final PDF file with an automatically applied rotation which could be wrong. We have optimized related parts and we now disable that option automatically when the user uses a custom rotation.
Improvement: The continue button of the Save As dialog now has the initial focus:
The initial focus of the Save As dialog is now on the continue button so that you can hit the enter button to continue if you do not want to make changes in that dialog. A lot of users informed us that this would be a nice improvement for a future version for those who want to work a bit faster here.
BugFix: Files in the compression tool can no longer be added twice:
A file already in the list of the compression tool can no longer be added again. You could do that in earlier versions but that was rather disadvantageous than beneficial.
BugFix: Fixed the debug console:
Since our compiler changes the debug console could no longer handle line feeds correctly. The debug console could not be used with that bug. We have analysed related parts and we have fixed that issue and now the console prints out correctly.
BugFix: Fixed an app crash when printing a range of pages:
Printing a range of pages could cause an app crash due to a logik bug in the page selection code. We have fixed that problem. Printing of the whole document and printing of selected pages worked as expected without errors.

New in PDF24 Creator 7.8.1 (May 23, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.8.0 (Apr 28, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.7.0 (Apr 5, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.6.4 (Feb 19, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.6.3 (Feb 8, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.6.2 (Feb 1, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.6.1 (Jan 29, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.6.0 (Jan 28, 2016)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.5.0 (Jan 18, 2016)

Feature: New Launcher added:
The Launcher is now a central element in the PDF24 Creator. The launcher is a small tool where you can see all the available tool of the PDF24 Creator (Creator, Assistant, Compression Tool, ...) and where you can open it. The PDF24 Creator contains several tools and now you have a tool which list all them and where you can open these tools.
Older setups installed you some icons in your windows so that you could open the PDF24 tools. This new version does not install these old icon shortcuts because we now have the new launcher. Now, the installer only installs you one icon shortcut which opens the launcher where you can open a specific tool.
Extension: GUI engine extended and improved:
We have extended and optimized the GUI engine so that we can now do some more things with that engine. We have improved speed, fixed some layout bugs and added new features. You can now also use the TAB key to move the focus between input text fields. The overall speed of the new GUI should be better.
Extension: Paper size ArchE1 added to the PDF printer:
We have extended the PDF printer description so that you now can now also choose the paper format ArchE1.
Extension: Drag & Drop of files into the Assistant
You can now drag & drop files into the file list of the assistant. You can drag & drop every file which can be converted to PDF. The file will be converted to PDF if the file isn't already a PDF file and shown in the list so that you can perform actions on that file.
Extension: Added more languages to the installer:
We have added Ukrainian, Slovenian and Norwegian to the installer.
Improvement: Screen Capture feature overworked and improved:
We have improved and extended the screen capture feature which is build in. We have added a GUI for that feature which helps to take screen captures. The GUI opens when you click on the screen capture button within the new Launcher. There you can select a mode and a target and you can start taking a screen capture.
The user defined area mode now supports multiple screens. You can select an area on each available screen which is connected to your computer. You can now also cancel the user defined area mode by hitting the ESCAPE key. We have also optimized the visualization of that mode. When you enter, you will notice the new light white transparent overlay on your screen. When you select a rectangle with your mouse, then we redraw that selected area without that overlay so that you can easily see what you have selected.
Improvement: Tray icon improved:
We have also overworked the tray icon because the new features of this version made some of the functions located in the tray icon redundant. When you right click on the tray icon you can open the context menu of that icon. You can no longer do that with a left click. We have stripped-down that menu and we have removed all elements except the open and close one. A double click on that icon now opens the new launcher mentioned above.
Improvement: Highlight color in the file list of the assistant changed:
The color is no longer the odd blue one because that does not fit into the design. We have changed that to a light gray. This is now also consistent with the PDF compression tool.
Improvement: Image export improved:
When you export a document as an image file format, then the exporter creates a new directory where the pages gets stored. Each file in that directory represents a single page of the exported document. When the document itself only contains a single page, then you will now get a slightly different behavior. In this single page case the application now uses a second step which removes that directory and which saves the single file under the name of that directory, directly as image file. That is what most users desired.
Improvement: Assistant or Creator PDF printer targets:
We have improved the PDF printer behavior in case of selecting the right tool for the printed file. If the assistant or creator is the foreground window than the printed file will be opened there. If both tools are open and none of them is the foreground window than we choose the tool depending on your settings. If only one tool is open, then we load the file there.
Improvement: Language file updates and corrections:
We have updated and extended all language files. Some parts of the language files are still untranslated. If you like the PDF24 Creator and if you have some spare time then you could support this project by translating some text elements. There are some easy to read language files in language folder of the software which you can open with a text editor.
Bugfix: Application goes into background:
A user has reported a bug that his application goes into background when he prints on the PDF printer. We have analysed that and we have fixed the relevant part which causes that. Now that should no longer happen.
Bugfix: Fixed a bug in the dialog of the join files feature:
You can join you files by the PDF24 context menu option. This join feature lets you select the output file. When the output directory contains the name PDF, then the dialog behaved wrongly. We have overworked this part so that the behavior should now be correct.
Bugfix: Compression tool could rotate pages:
The PDF file compression tool sometimes rotated pages in a PDF file. That behavior is wrong because this tool should not affect page rotation. It should only compress PDF files. We have fixed that is this version. The orientation of pages should be kept as is.

New in PDF24 Creator 7.4.1 (Nov 18, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.4.0 (Oct 5, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.3.1 (Sep 14, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.3.0 (Sep 10, 2015)

Extension: F2 key to change the name of a document in the creator:
You can now change the name of a document by pressing the F2 key when you have selected a document in the document list. You can select a document by clicking on it. The F2 key opens a form where you can enter a new name.
Extension: Auto generation of owner password:
To apply PDF security settings an owner password is required which you had to enter in the form. You now can apply security settings without to enter this password. The PDF24 Creator generates a random one for you when you leave the password blank.
BugFix: Change of PDF printer tool:
The PDF printer tool could sometimes not be changed via the preference pages of the application. This was a bug and we have fixed that. Users who had errors should now be able to change the tool.
BugFix: First try to fix the "Error writing to output file" error:
Some users could not save PDF files. They got the error "Error writing to output file". We do not know the exact reason why that happens but we have an idea what could cause that error. This version tries to fix that bug.
BugFix: Not removed temporary files:
Sometimes the creator where unable to delete some temporary files which where used by the application. We have found two new places where that could happen and we have implemented a fix for that.
Improvement: New logic to load files into the creator:
This version brings a new logic to load files into the creator. Some users have reported that they had font and character issues when they merge files. We have found a solution for that with the new file loading mechanism. The new procedure is a little bit slower than the old one but not too slow and fixes the mentioned bugs.
If you feel bad with the new procedure you can reactivate the old behavior by pressing the CTRL key while loading a file or you can change the registry DWORD value CreatorDirectPDFLoad to 1 within the user settings of the app.
Improvement: PDF security now possible together with file enclosures:
Automatically appending and/or prepending a file to the actual one could not be combined with PDF security options. The generated PDF file had no security settings applied. This is now possible.

New in PDF24 Creator 7.2.0 (Sep 1, 2015)

Extension: Print function added to the Assistant:
The Assistant has got a new function. You can now print a document directly from the Assistant on a printer available in your system. That is a cool thing, e.g. to use the PDF printer as print preview. Print on the PDF printer if you need a preview. The Assistant opens. There you can open a preview by clicking on the corresponding button. If all is fine then print on a physical printer directly from the Assistant.
Improvement: PDF print feature optimized:
Version 7.2 brings an optimized PDF print function. The function has been revised and optimized.
Extension: Open output profiles from the Assistant:
There is a new link in the footer of the Assistant. A click on that link opens the output profile view where you can manage your profiles.
BugFix: Fixed default page rotation settings:
The setting value to rotate pages automatically based on the text of the document is normally activated by default. This was not the case in the last versions. We have fixed that so that pages will be rotated automatically if you do not choose an other option.
Extension: Output profiles extended and bugs fixed:
RGB is the default color model if you do not choose another one.
The JPEG compression is now the default one for color and gray scale images. PDF files should now be a little bit smaller in size than PDF files produced with older versions. You can change the compression method and the JPEG compression quality when you save as PDF.
We have also added a new section to the PDF filter. You can now convert the colors of a file by choosing one of the color convert options of the corresponding select field. You can, for instance, convert colors to gray-scale.
We have also fixed a bug in version 7.1.0 regarding the color model and color conversion. Version 7.1.0 could produce PDF files which could not be opened.
The PDF filter areas has been reorganized to improve the usability.
Extension: GUI Layout Engine extended:
We had some issues with keyboard events which where not passed correctly to parent components. That was the case why the console of the Assistant could not always be opened by the F12 key.
Extension: Overlay-Feature added:
Version 7.2 brings the new overlay feature. In addition to the paper feature you can select an overlay PDF file. The content of that file is combined with the content of the actual file so that the content of the overlay file is on top of the content of the actual one. That is the opposite compared to the paper feature. You can use that feature to brand a file, to add a complex watermark or as alternative to the digital paper when the content of the actual file hides the content of the paper.
Extension: Updated the language files

New in PDF24 Creator 7.1.0 (Aug 26, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.0.7 (Aug 18, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.0.6 (Jul 21, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.0.5 (Jul 13, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.0.4 (Jul 7, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.0.3 (Jul 6, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.0.2 (Jul 6, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.0.1 (Jul 1, 2015)

New in PDF24 Creator 7.0.0 (Jun 24, 2015)

Extension: Extensions and improvements in the assistant:
Version 7 brings a revised wizard that has been improved in many ways. On the left there is now a file list which contains the printed files. The center pane of the application contains the file action buttons which are now better than the old ones. The buttons are larger and have icons and text and better mouse effects. Above the list, there are some buttons to manage the list. Joining all documents in the list is also possible. You can select a document in the list and you can perform an action on that document by clicking on one of the action buttons.
We plan to make the action buttons customizable so that you can add or remove buttons. We will introduce that feature with a future versions. The benefit of that customization is that you as a user or as a company can add some more buttons to add functionality you need.
Feature: Integration into Windows Explorer context menu:
There is now an integration into the Windows Explorer context menu. By clicking the right mouse button on a file or in the background of the explorer, the normal context menu opens. This menu now contains the PDF24 sub-item.
The following functions are available for file via the PDF24 context menu
Open selected files with the Creator for further processing
Print selected files on the PDF printer
Split selected documents page by page
Optimize selected documents for the web
Join all selected documents to one PDF
Send selected documents by e-mail
Send selected documents by fax
Apply an output profile to selected files
Extract page from the selected files
Convert selected files to ...
Convert selected files to PDF
Convert selected file to PDF online
The following functions are accessible via the PDF24 explorer background context menu
Import From Scanner or Camera
Import from the clipboard
Improvement: Improved command lines of some tools:
When it comes to the command line of the PDF24 Creator tools, some improvements have been made. Some arguments have been revised, removed, added and unified in order to facilitate the work with the command line. The command line interface will be documented later.
BugFix: Prevent from opening twice:
Under certain circumstances, some tools could open twice, which is not wanted for some tools. The Creator, for example, should be opened only one instance, because this instance can handle multiple files. Under certain conditions, it was still possible that the tool could open twice. The problems should be fixed.
BugFix: Fixed a bug in the PS and EPS output filter:
The output filters for the file types PS and EPS was broken. We have fixed and optimized the relevant parts and now you should be able to save as PS and EPS.
BugFix: EPS filter creates one file per page:
An EPS file contains one page per file. The output filter in the PDF24 Creator was not correct, so you could always only save the first page of a file. This problem is now fixed. The output filter for EPS now creates a folder containing the files of each page.
BugFix + Improvement: Drag and Drop fixes and improvements:
The drag and drop implementation has been improved so that more things are possible here which can be used by the tools. Version 7 also fixes some other minor bugs within the implementation.
Improvement: Output filters for image files improved:
When you save a document as an image, then one image file is created for each page of that document. The output filter has now been extended so that the filter always creates a folder with the page image files of the document. The user has to choose a destination file. The filter creates a folder under that name and saves the page image files into that folder.
Improvement: Moved the Page-Extract-Dialog from the Creator to the DocTool:
The Page-Extract-Dialog is now part of the DocTool. The advantage of that change is that the DocTool can now be used to open this dialog for a file.
Improvement: Page-Extract-Dialog enlarged and improved:
The Page-Extract-Dialog is now slightly larger and the usability is now better.
Improvement: Process-Status-Dialogs can now be reused:
Some operations executes minor sub task which would normally open and then close the process dialog. This is annoying for some operations. One dialog instance can now be shared between some tasks and the tasks itself only change the status of the shared status window instance.
Improvement: Clipboard handler of the DocTool optimized:
If there are files in the clipboard, then the DocTool can extract these files and now also communicates the names of these files correctly. Older versions did not used the document name so that the name could not be used in the tools.
Feature: Extended the DocTool:
We have added a lot of new features to the DocTool. Almost all the functions that are present in the PDF24 Windows Explorer context menu extension uses the DocTool to execute the corresponding operation. The functions can be executed from the command line. We will document these functions later.
One example of what you can now do with the DocTool is to join multiple files to one.
Extension: Extended the GUI layout engine:
The GUI engine has been extended and improved in some points and some components (e.g. the assistant) uses that new features.
Improvement: Improved the language file module and all language files:
Language files can now have some properties in the file header and the language module can read these properties. The PDF24 Creator uses these properties to determine the language at first application start and to display better language names in the setting page.
We have added Norwegian as new language file. A lot of files are fully translated, but there are still some files with missing parts. The English language file is used for all missing elements. Translations are usually contributed by users.
Improvement: File names when printing in a browser:
When browsers print they often send file names which represents URLs or parts of URLs. We now take that into account and to our best to determine a file name of that submitted name.
Feature: Append and/or prepend a file to the actual one:
The PDF output filter has a new feature to attach a file automatically to the actual one. You will recognize the new element of that filter when you open the Save As dialog. The files can be stored into a profile so that you can apply a predefined profile to printed files. This is a good feature e.g. if you want to append some terms or other information automatically.
Improvement: Save As dialog optimized:
We have seen some effects in older version of the Save As dialog which could be optimized. Loading a profile is now faster. Older version have a bug and load profile twice because of some events. File select elements could sometimes not be stored/loaded into/from a profile.
Improvement: Prompt for "The document XXX is not yet saved ..." optimized:
The prompt of "The document XXX has not been saved. Do you want to save it?" also appeared if you have only loaded a document. It would be better to show that message only if the document has been modified. We have implemented that in this way.
Improvement: Updater optimized:
The GUI, update request, downloading and error handling have been improved. The behavior especially in cases of errors where not satisfying in older versions.
Improvement: Layout fix in the Creator at DPI levels not equal to 96:
The Creator is optimized for DPI levels of 96 DPI but can also be used at other DPI values. Version 7.0 fixes the to large spacer bar between the toolbar and the file path element of the explorer inside the creator.
Improvement: Citrix Multi User session fix:
If a user is logged in multiple times and if the user prints on the PDF printer then the assistant opened in one of the user sessions but not necessarily in the session from which was printed. That was bad. We have optimized some parts in order to fix that behavior.

New in PDF24 Creator 6.9.2 (Nov 28, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.9.1 (Nov 12, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.9.0 (Nov 11, 2014)

Improvement: Optimized auto save feature:
We have improved the file save method of the auto save feature. In previous versions a created file could be overwritten with the next auto saved file if the next file was produced to fast. We now have a better file locking mechanism so that we can make a file name unique if there is already a file with the same file name.
Improvement: Better support for converting MS Office files to PDF:
We have optimized the auto conversion of MS Office files so that these files can now be better converted to PDF. These files are now handled in a special way.
Feature: Support for the backspace key within the file explorer list:
We have added support for the backspace key within the file explorer list to change to the parent folder of the currently opened one.
Improvement: Improved label editing within the file list:
We also improved label editing within the file list view of the file explorer when a link is to be edited.
Improvement: Improved the file explorer list in point of speed:
The file list is now virtual and a lot of faster then the list of previous versions. If you open a folder with only a few elements than you will not notice the faster list but if you open a folder with some thousand elements then the speed difference is very large. In previous versions you could wait some seconds until the list was ready and now this will only took some milliseconds. Some companies have really large folders and waiting is really annoying.
Improvement: Improved the file explorer tree:
The file explorer tree no longer shows the current folder of the file list view because this reduced the file explorer speed in some cases. You can still navigate by the directory tree to open folders and the list shows the currently opened folder of the tree but in the other way this is no longer the case. This greatly improves the speed and the behavior is now more like the Windows explorer. Furthermore we have optimized some other points to make the tree faster.
Improvement: Optimized the start condition of a Drag & Drop operation in the explorer tree:
Sometimes the Drag & Drop operation was initiated to fast which was not necessary. We have optimized that part to get a better behavior.
Feature: Added an input field for the currently opened folder:
We have added an input field which shows the currently opened folder. The path of that input field can be edited by the user to change the path by hitting the enter key.
Improvement: Updated some language file.

New in PDF24 Creator 6.8.0 (Oct 14, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.7.0 (Jul 4, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.6.0 (Jun 27, 2014)

Improvement: Control of default printer optimized:
The DocTool sometimes have to change the users default printer to the PDF24 PDF printer in order to convert a file to a PDF. This change is reverted after the conversion is finished. We have optimized this part of the code within the DocTool.
Improvement: Mutex Locks optimized:
The DocTool uses mutex locks to synchronize DocTool executions. We have optimized here so that these locks will be used only when really necessary.
Feature: DocTool now has a shell print command:
The DocTool can now be used to execute a shell print command on a file to print the file on a printer.
Feature: DocTool can create PDF files from clipboard content:
This is a cool feature. You can use the DocTool to e.g. create a PDF file from an image which is in the clipboard. If the clipboard contains a file reference then this file will be converted to PDF.
Feature: DocTool can do file uploads:
The DocTool can now be used to upload files to internet services.
Improvement: Converting files with the PDF printer optimized:
We have optimized how we access the PDF printer to convert files to PDF. In previous version the message "Could maybe not be converted" where shown relatively often because we did not know whether the conversion is possible or not. Here comes the optimization. We have optimized that so that we now better know whether a conversion is possible or not.
Improvement: Special handling for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files no longer required:
There was a special handling for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files to convert these files to PDF. This is as of now no longer required because of the optimization above. If a print command is available for a specific file type then this file can be converted to PDF.
Improvement: Drag and Drop file import order optimized:
The file import order now exactly matches the order of the submitted files via the drag & drop action. Older versions could break that order which was bad in some cases where the order is crucial.

New in PDF24 Creator 6.5.0 (Jun 4, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.4.1 (May 14, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.4.0 (May 7, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.3.2 (Feb 7, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.3.1 (Feb 5, 2014)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.3.0 (Feb 4, 2014)

Improvement: Overwriting files in auto save mode:
The PDF printer auto save feature now does not overwrite existing files any longer. Now, if a file exists, a suffix is appended to the file name under which the file will be saved.
Update: Update of language files:
The following files has been updated: English, Polish, Finnish, Lithuanian, Czech, Spanish, Italian
Improvement: Moved file name erasement options:
The file name erasement options are now part of the PDF printer page.
Improvement: Supported placeholders added to the form:
Supported placeholders in the settings pages are now visible in the GUI.
Improvement: Scrollbar issues fixed:
Sometimes scrollbars where shown where they wouldn't be necessary. We have optimized some GUI parts so that now scrollbars are only visible if they are really necessary.
Improvement: Focus change between areas optimized:
Now, some windows gains the focus when the mouse moves into this windows. This improves usability in some dialogs where user can scroll so that no click is needed any longer to get the focus which activates scrolling for that window.
Improvement: ADMIN suffix in settings dialog title:
The settings window now has the title suffix ADMIN when the settings dialog is opened with full administrator rights to change special settings.
Feature: Custom command in automatic save mode:
We have added a custom command feature to the PDF printer auto save mode. The feature can be enabled and configured in the PDF Printer pages of the application settings.
Feature: ShellPrint command added to the pdf24-docTool.exe:
Now there is a shell print feature in the pdf24-docTool.exe. The command pdf24-docTool.exe -shellPrint -printerName FILE can be used to print out a file on a printer using the shell print windows feature. The can be used together with the auto save feature of the PDF printer to print out a file on another printer.
Feature: ALT key to break auto save mode:
Now you can use the ALT key to break the auto save mode of the PDF printer. If auto save is enabled and if you print on the PDF printer, the printed file is then normally saved to a file. You can temporarily break this by keeping pressed the ALT key when sending a file to the PDF printer. This opens the PDF24 assistant or the PDF24 Creator where you can handle the file as if you don't had activated the auto save mode.
BugFix: Custom profile in auto save settings page:
We have also improved the custom profile selection in the auto save settings page. The custom profile was not shown as selected after having been selected.
Feature: Custom profile when saving automatically:
When the custom profile option in the auto save setting page is selected then the format option dialog will be opened after printing a document on the PDF printer. There you can make custom settings which will be used when saving the file.

New in PDF24 Creator 6.2.0 (Dec 12, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.1.0 (Dec 4, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.0.1 (Dec 3, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 6.0.0 (Oct 28, 2013)

BugFix: Reworking of digital paper feature
Integration of digital paper into the document was erroneous if the PDF files was of a newer standard (1.5 and above). We have solved that issue in this version
BugFix: Extra page when adding watermarks
An extra page was added to the document when the watermark feature was used. This bug is solved
Improvement: Renaming of PDF24 Editor to PDF24 Creator
The PDF24 Creator itself is consisted of the PDF printer and a tool called PDF24 Editor, which can be used to compose/edit files page-based. Users also expected that they can also use this tool to edit the content of PDF pages, but that is not possible. The tool can do something with whole pages but the content of pages can not be manipulated. That the reason for the renaming and we think the name Creator better reflects the possibilities with that tool
Improvement: Ghostscript 9.10 is now used
This version now uses the latest Ghostscript 9.10
Feature: Screen Capture to clipboard
A lot of users desired the Screen Capture to clipboard functionality as option besides the Screen Capture to PDF feature. The new feature is now part of the software and is accessible through the PDF24 tray icon. A new menu group was added to the tray icon which contains the new tools
Improvement: Changed a license part for the good of the user
There was a license part which stated that some parts of the software will be disabled after 6 month usage without update. This parts is now no longer part of the license terms. Nothing is disabled after 6 month usage. Now, the user will only see an update information if an update is available and recommended for installation
Feature: Default save folder = source folder of loaded file
This little change eases the usage of the PDF24 creator because the folder of the loaded file is often used to save the new file after doing some modifications
Improvement: Issue with the warning "Target could not be found" solved
The warning was shown in the PDF24 Creator if a shortcut could not be resolved. Now this warning will not be shown if the PDF24 Creator opens
BugFix: Fixed the page from .. to feature when saving files
The page from ... to fields where sometimes not recognized. This version overworked the corresponding parts to solve that problem
Improvement: Fixed some GUI issues:
Some GUI elements where not displayed correctly especially when the default DPI settings was changed. Some GUI parts of the application scaled in a wrong manner so that is was not possible to work with that parts. We have optimized the parts so that the program can also be used on screens with higher DPI values
Improvement: Cut Save as Dialog on screen with resolution 1280 x 1024
We have overworked the GUI of the Save As dialog so that the screen 1280 x 1024 should no longer be a problem
Feature: New output filter TEXT added:
The new filter can save as TEXT, currently in the encodings UTF8 and UCS2
Improvement: Restructuring of the settings:
We have added some new options to the settings which could not be integrated into the old structure. Therefore we have changed a little here
Feature: Open PDF file after storing it:
There is now also the feature to automatically open a saved PDF files. This eases the work flow PDF printer -> Assistent -> Save -> Open
Improvement: Extended language files:
We have extended all language file and made them up to date so that all files have all keys. Some files are currently not fully translated. This will be done by translators and we will add the missing parts as soon as we get it
Feature: Command line changes of the pdf24-docTool.exe:
The tool now supports multiple files at once
BugFix: Resetting the default printer:
Resetting the default printer was not executed in some parts so that the PDF24 printer was left the default one. We have fixed the known areas
Feature: Auto-Save feature added:
Files can now be saved automatically without GUI interaction. The feature can be controlled by the settings. You can define the folder where to save, a file name pattern and a profile which shall be applied when saving. If that feature is enabled and if you print on the PDF printer then the printed document will be saved automatically into the defined folder. You can also define whether the folder should be opened after the file was saved
Improvement: Optimized the print feature:
The PDF24 Creator has a print feature by which the current selection can be printed. Sometimes the print quality was bad especially when printed high resolution documents. We have improved that part so that the quality is better and can also be better controlled by the DPI setting in the printer property pages
Improvement: Umlauts and other characters are now usable when saving to PDF
Older releases had some issues with umlauts and other characters outside the ASCII range. Issues where related to the following subsections of the PDF output filter: Watermark text, PDF meta data such as title, author and keywords, PDF/X and PDF/A settings and PDF passwords

New in PDF24 Creator 5.7.0 (Jul 22, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 5.6.0 (Jun 10, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 5.5.1 (May 31, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 5.5.0 (May 30, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 5.4.0 (May 30, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 5.3.0 (Feb 19, 2013)

New in PDF24 Creator 5.2.0 (Dec 12, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 5.1.0 (Nov 29, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 5.0.0 (Nov 17, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.9.0 (Sep 6, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.8.0 (Jul 30, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.7.0 (Jul 12, 2012)

Fix: Fixed a special name bug:
Sending a document attached to an email directly from the PDF24 Editor changed the name of the corresponding document to a cryptic one. This was a bug which is now fixed.
Fix: PDF24 Editor window appeared behind other windows:
The PDF24 Editor window could appear behind all other windows when you print to the virtual printer and the Editor is set as default target. This problem is fixed.
Enhancement: Font replacement in settings dialog:
The font in the settings dialog of the PDF24 Creator has been replaced with a better readable one. Now the dialog looks more modern.
Feature: Close assistant after sending the document via email:
There was already an setting to close the assistant automatically when the file was saved. This feature is now also available for the email function of the assistant. You can configure the assistant so that the assistant closes after you have sent the document via email.
Enhancement: PDF password obfuscation:
Passwords in Save as Dialog are now obfuscated by "*" characters so nobody can read them. This was a potentially risk in prior versions because the password was visible in the input field.
Enhancement: Save as PDF with digital paper and security enabled:
Digital paper and security can now be used together when saving a PDF file.
Feature: Format options and profiles can now be opened via a menu entry:
In older version you could only add profiles when you have saved a document via the save as dialog. Now we have added a menu entry in the PDF24 Editor's main menu where you can open the format options and where you can manage your output profiles.
Feature: Refresh option in folder tree of the PDF24 Editor:
We have added a refresh option to the explorer tree in the PDF24 Editor so that the user can refresh the tree manually if something have changed what the application do not track automatically.
Enhancement: Password encryption in output profiles:
When you specify a password in your profiles, the text was visible in the registry. This was a potential risk. Now passwords are saved encrypted in the profiles which are stored in the windows registry.
Feature: Names of network drives are now displayed:
The names of connected network drives where not visible in older versions. Names are important to identify a drive fastly and therefore we have added the names of network drives to the explorer tree of the PDF24 Editor.
Feature: Better cursor when opening a folder:
This version now uses better cursors when opening folders in the explorer of the editor. Especially when operating on network drives it could take a little longer to get results. In the waiting time a wait cursor is shown so that the user knows that the application is busy. The application switches back to a normal cursor, after the operation is finished.
Feature: Dropping files to the favourites folder:
Dropping files to the favourites folder in the explorer of the editor now creates only shortcuts to the dropped files. No files will be moved or copied any longer. Now the favourites folder is a special folder with shortcuts to often used files.
Enhancement: File icon query improved:
The module which is responsible for querying file icons has been improved in many cases. Especially the risk of potential deadlocks has been better taken into account.
Fix: Fixed an icon bug in the file list of the explorer of the PDF24 Editor:
The bug was responsible that in some cases wrong file icons was presented to the user. This part has been overworked and the bug is fixed.
Enhancement: Many core module enhanced:
We have overworked many core modules of the software with the result of a better API and many minor improvements and minor fixes.
Enhancement: Shortcut resolution improved:
We have improved the explorer inside the editor to handle shortcuts properly. Shortcuts too files and directories are now handled correctly within the file list and the folder tree.
Enhancement: Icon creation of shortcuts improved:
Furthermore we have improved the creation of image icons of shortcuts. Shortcuts are resolved and an icon of the linked file is determined.
Enhancement: Improved selection and deselection of documents:
We have slightly improved the selection and deselection of documents in the document list of the editor. Now it is more Windows Explorer like selection and deselection which is more intuitive.
Feature: Drag & Drop of documents to move them:
Now it is possible to drag & drop documents inside the document list of the editor to move them up and down. This makes working with documents easier.
Fix: Drag & Drop memory leakage fix:
There was a memory leakage in some circumstances when dragging and dropping documents in the PDF24 Editor. The responsible parts have been overworked so that the bug is fixed.
Feature: Drag & Drop documents combined with output filters:
We have extended the drag & Drop support of documents in the PDF24 Editor. If you drop documents you can now choose an output filter which is used to create the resulting file which is then dropped to the target. This way you can drop documents to create PDF files, images or any other file format which the output filter accepts. Furthermore you can configure the output filter so that the dropped result is what you need. Additionally you can now drag & drop multiple files at once. This extension is a quite cool new feature which eases working with the PDF24 Editor and which makes dropping of files very powerful.
Enhancement: Error handling when opening PDF files:
We have added an error handling when opening PDF files in the PDF24 Editor. If a PDF file can not be opened directly we try to recreate the file and we try to open the recreated one. This often helps to load PDF file with small errors.
Enhancement: Image to PDF quality improved:
We have increased the default image quality in image to PDF conversion. Now, images inside PDF files have a better default quality. We have also added customizable config values to the image to PDF tool. This options are currently not available in the settings pages of the application.
Enhancement: PDF processing improved:
We have optimized some internal processing parameters to produce better PDF file results.

New in PDF24 Creator 4.6.0 (May 22, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.5.0 (May 8, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.4.2 (Mar 15, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.4.1 (Mar 6, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.4.0 (Feb 10, 2012)

Fax printer to send faxes for free
The new version 4.4 also install the new PDF24 FAX printer on all windows versions. The new FAX printer is a very handy new printer which enables you to send faxes very easily.
Printing on the Fax printer opens a small form where you can enter the FAX number of the target device. A preview of the fax is also displayed.
The Faxes are sent through the new PDF24 Fax service, which is located at fax.pdf24.org. To send faxes, a short registration is needed.
Currently the service is completely free, but limited to a few number of faxes each day. After a short beta phase the service will be extended and then you can remove the limits by paying for each fax. Receiving faxes will also be possible by registering and paying for a fax number.
Better names when loading a document into the PDF24 Editor:
Names for documents in the PDF24 Editor are now the file names when dropping file to the job list or when opening a file from a file system. This is more intuitive and easier. If a name can not be determined, e.g. if a drag & drop operation does not deliver a name, then a new name is created for that document.
Bug in PDF24 Editor fixed:
Importing a single file via File->Import->From filesystem did nothing. Importing multiple files worked without problems. This bug is fixed.
Better names for files when saving as an image:
This version uses leading 0 in front of the page number. This improves the sortability of the produced page image files. Old names and sorting was like this: Page1, Page10, Page11, ..., Page20, Page2, Page3, Page4, Page5. This is changed to the new names: Page001, Page002, Page003, ..., Page010, ... Page020. This is better for sorting.
Added support for new keys in page container of a document:
The new supported for keys are LEFT, RIGHT, HOME, END. This eases the navigation inside a document.
Support for new keys in document container of the editor added:
The new supported keys are UP, DOWN, PAGE_UP, PAGE_DOWN. This eases the navigation inside the document list.
Improved drag & drop of pages in the PDF24 Editor:
The support for the new keys introduced some new complexity concerning the drag & drop of pages. The drag & drop components have been overworked to fix all these problems.
Fixed a bug concerning the debug console:
The debug console received not every outputs which were produced by the applications. This problem is fixed.
Components of the PDF24 Creator improved:
All components now link against the msvcr100.dll and msvcp100.dll, which are part of the setup. This reduces the size of the PDF24 Creator and enables some nice things for the future.
New version of ZLib added
The setup itself now supports new languages: Hungarian, Danish, Finnish
New language file Croatian added and some other language files overworked

New in PDF24 Creator 4.3.0 (Feb 3, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.2.0 (Jan 23, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.1.2 (Jan 23, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.1.1 (Jan 23, 2012)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.1.0 (Dec 14, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 4.0.0 (Dec 10, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.9.0 (Dec 6, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.8.0 (Nov 3, 2011)

New feature: Blank pages can be added to documents:
This feature is provided by the PDF24 Editor and is located in context menu of pages. Just right click on a page of a document and you will see two options to add blank pages. Blank pages can be inserted before or after a page. The inserted blank page has the same dimension as the page before or after which the blank page was inserted.
Bug fix: Fixed a bug in PDF library:
With this bug fix the PDF24 Creator now can open more PDF files. Some special PDF files could cause problems. There are still some PDF files which can't be opened by the PDF24 Editor. If a PDF file can't be opened there is a trick to open the file. Just print the file on the PDF24 PDF printer to create a new PDF file based on the old one. The new file should work fine. That's possible because real PDF readers often can still open these files.
Added /NOUPDATE flag to setup:
Use this flag when installing the PDF Creator to disable update checking and installation. This flag is useful for companies which wants too use the PDF24 Creator on their clients. Use this flag and you can disable updates which are often the preferred update mode.
Changed button name Save in format options dialog to Continue...
The new name is often better than the old one because the user has to do some more things after clicking on the save button. The Continue... button is better if some more steps follows.
Romanian and Bulgarian language files added:
The PDF24 Creator is available in 16 different languages. To make the PDF24 available to more people we need more language files. If you have translated one language files to a language which is not available in PDF24 Creator setup then send us your file and we will add it to the PDF24 setup.
All language files overworked:
We have overworked all language files and added missing parts. Not translated parts are marked with a #! marker. All these lines needs to be translated by translators. Please translate these parts and send us your files.
Improved data removement if not used any more:
The PDF24 Editor had stored not used data longer than required. We have fixed this. Not used data is freed as soon as possible.
Slightly improved drag & drop support in editors document list
Invert selection feature added to page extract dialog:
We have added a context menu to the page container in the page extract dialog. This context menu contains a invert selection entry which inverts the current selection of pages. This new feature is useful if extracting pages of large documents.
Mouse wheel feature added to page container in page extract dialog:
Now you can use the mouse wheel to scroll up and down in the page container of the page extract dialog. Very useful when using large PDF files.

New in PDF24 Creator 3.7.0 (Oct 12, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.6.0 (Sep 28, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.5.3 (Sep 7, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.5.2 (Aug 5, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.5.1 (Aug 5, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.5.0 (Aug 4, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.4.0 (Aug 1, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.3.0 (Jul 7, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 3.2.0 (Jun 28, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.9 (Apr 19, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.8 (Apr 19, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.7 (Apr 19, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.6 (Apr 19, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.5 (Apr 7, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.4 (Apr 7, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.3 (Apr 6, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.2 (Apr 1, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.1 (Apr 1, 2011)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.9.0 (Apr 1, 2011)

Support for PDF/X and PDF/A:
The support for creating PDF/X and PDF/A files has been integrated. This two new file formats can be created by using the Save as dialog. Each of these types has its own properties which can be configured in the dialog.
Selecting multiple pages in editor enhanced:
In previous versions of the PDF24 Editor it could only be selected one page after another. There was no possibility to select more than one page at a time. This was no problem for documents with only a few pages, but if the document is large and if you would select a range of pages you had to select every page manually by using the CTRL key and the left mouse button. We have improved that. Now you can select a range of pages by using the LSHIFT key and the left mouse button. The behaviour is similar to the Windows Explorer file selection. To do a range selection, do this: Select the first page by clicking the left mouse button and then click the last page by holding down the LSHIFT key. If the CTRL key is also pressed then this page range will be added to currently selected pages, otherwise all other pages will be deselected.
PDF output profiles useable directly in assistant:
In Save as dialog you can add profiles for the output format to preconfigure an output. If you define a profile for the PDF file type this profile is then useable in assistant's profile list. This workflow is shorter than saving to PDF by using the save as dialog.
Automatically close assistant after file save:
There is a new option in settings by which you can configure the closing behaviour of assistant. By activating the close after save option the assistant will be closed automatically after a file was saved.
Better font for input fields in user interfaces:
There were some incorrect fonts in some input fields which don't suit to the rest of the user interface. We have enhanced some core parts of our rendering engine to improve this.
Profile intentions for profiles in save as dialog added:
A profile in save as dialog now contains an intention for which output type a profile was made. A profile switch now opens the output type page for which the profile is intended. This property is also used in assistant for collecting all PDF profile and for make available in profile selection box in assistant.
Bug in conversion tool fixed:
There could be unpredictable results in conversion tool when be used with multiple files at a time. This version contains a solution for that problem. Now you can use the conversion tool with multiple files without any problems. The conversion tool is used in editor to automatically convert documents to PDF by dragging files into the appropriate area in editor.
Solved problem in signature tool when signing documents with only one page:
Documents with only one page could not be signed because of a bug in a algorithm. The editor crashed when doing it. We have fixed the bug.
Optimize for web an security option in PDF properties can not be used together in all circumstances:
A PDF could not be saved when optimize for web and security options with user password was activated. This version contains a workaround for this problem. If security with user password is active a PDF will not be web optimized. We will improve this behaviour in future versions.

New in PDF24 Creator 2.8.8 (Nov 19, 2010)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.8.7 (Nov 16, 2010)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.8.6 (Oct 14, 2010)

New GUI in PDF24 Assistant:
The new GUI in PDF24 Assistant displays elements better than the old one. The formatting of elements should now be ok with all languages. The old GUI had formatting problems using languages with bigger text elements. Forthermore there were problems in older versions of the PDF24 pdf printer when using it in Windows environments with DPI settings other than the default 96 DPI.
Hide drives in explorer of PDF24 Editor:
The explorer of the PDF24 Editor now uses the Windows Explorer setting, which is located in registry under the path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoDrives, to hide drives. Admins of Citrix systems now can use this to hide drives which some user must not see.
Settings - Load PDF in editor if it is open - added:
With this option you can control whether printed PDF documents are to be loaded in editor if the editor is open or not. By default pdf documents will be loaded in assistant and if the editor is open it will be loaded in it. User who don't want this behavior can change this with this new option.
Remove some strings from filenames determined in PDF printing process:
The settings contains a new area in which a user can add some strings which are to be removed automatically from filenames which were determined in PDF printing process. Some applications add prefixes to filenames which are unwanted. This new area gives you the possibility to remove this automatically. There are preconfigured strings for some Microsoft programs like Word.
Removed flickering in GUI of PDF24 Editor:
Partially there was annoying flickering in the list of loaded PDF documents when you have clicked on a document. This flickering is removed now.
Improved renderung of some GUIs:
GUIs which are rendered by our small HTML rendering engine are now rendered faster. Some GUIs looks better now and have removed or reduced flickering.
Problems in explorer preview mode of PDF24 editor fixed:
The explorer preview mode of PDF24 editor has been optimized so that all preview elements should be displayed as it ought to be. In older versions it could be that some preview elements could not be displayed correctly.
Rotation of preview modes of loaded PDF documents in document list of PDF24 Editor by using CTRL + MOUSE-WHEEL:
PDF documents in PDF24 Editor can be displayed is some preview modes which can be changed by menu entries. Now you can also change or rotate the diaplay mode of all documents in the document list by hold down the CTRL key and using the mouse wheel.
Language file Portuguese added:
The PDF24 Creator now contains a portuguese language file. This is for all of the portuguese users which now can choose this file to localize the PDF24 Creator to portuguese.
Additional PDF options added in Save as dialog:
Clicking on Save as button in PDF24 Assistant opens a dialog in which a user can select and configure a output filter. The PDF output filter now contains some more options to customize PDF output. You can now configure the PDF standard, page rotation, resolution, color model, image compression method and fonts too.

New in PDF24 Creator 2.8.5 (Aug 24, 2010)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.8.1 (Mar 12, 2010)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.8.0 (Mar 9, 2010)

Preview in assistant integrated
The assistant contains a preview now which gives you a fast overview of the created pdf file. The preview loads fast and has basic functionality to overview the document. Based on the preview you can see whether all pages were created correctly.
Filename request in assistant integrated when using email feature
When using the email function an inputbox is shown first to request a filename for the file which will be attached to the email. In older versions there was no filename request with the consequence that files could have cryptic names in an email. There was no possibility to change the name. Sometimes the name was ok because PDF24 Creator hat a method to request the name from windows printer monitor, but a name isn't always given. Now you can enter a good name.
Names of documents in editor can be changed now
You can change the name of a document in editor via the context menu. The context menu contains an entry to start changing a name. In older versions name changes were done when saving a document. Useful is this feature when sending a document via email. The name of a file attached to an email is the name of a document in editor. The new feature gives you the possiblity to change the name and therefore to enter a good name for files in emails.
Removed bug in email functionality
When sending a created file via email the standard email program is used. There could be a focus problem when opening this standard mail program. This focus problem has been removed.
Removed bug when sharing the PDF printer in a network
A printer can be shared in a network. This can be done with the PDF24 PDF printer too, but there was a bug while printing on this shared printer from a pc which uses this shared printer. The message "Could not open user pipe" popped up in this circumstances. This problem has been removed. Now you can share a PDF printer in a network and use it on other PC's in the network. A typical instance is a client server application. If you have a server in which a program is running which is used by clients, you can share the client PDF printers and install them on the server so that the clients can print on their PDF printers to get some printouts of the application on the server.
Faster viewer in editor
The viewer has been enhanced. The viewer is faster and annoying flickering has been removed.

New in PDF24 Creator 2.7.0 (Mar 9, 2010)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.6.3 (Dec 15, 2009)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.6.2 (Dec 7, 2009)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.6.1 (Dec 5, 2009)

New in PDF24 Creator 2.6 (Nov 27, 2009)

Multi user environments now supported:
The PDF24 Creator has been optimized for multi user environments. There were problems in older versions when using PDF printer on PC's with more than one user. This problems has been fixed. Now you can use the pdf printer on PC's with more than one users.
The update behaviour has been changed too. Not every user can install updates. The PDF creator checks security attribues of users now and determines whether a user has necessary rights to update the program. A user with limited rights can't install updates but administrators. The new concepts of Windows Vista and Windows 7 has been taken into account. Users with limited rights will only see a notification that an update is available.
PDF Screen Capture feature integrated:
Now you can capture the screen or only a portion of the screen to create a PDF of that content. There are several options: whole screen, screen working area, active windows, active window content or a user defined area. The screen capture feature is located in PDF24 Creator windows tray icon.
Windows Tray Icon integrated:
There is a windows tray icon for the PDF24 Creator now. Currently the tray icon is used to display settings, open the PDF editor, show infos, close backend program and use screen capture feature. The icon becomes visualized if a pdf creation process via pdf printer in running. Programm notifications can always be shown.
New pdf printer drivers for Windows Vista and Windows 7:
The PDF24 Creator uses new printer drivers for pdf printer. The new drivers provides more features than older used ones. Now there is no limitation in paper size. Small pages can be created as good as large ones. The driver contains most of the common used paper formats A0 - A7, letter, ledger, executive. A user defined paper size is also possible.
Settings area extended:
Now there is a central preferences area. This area can be opened from several locations. The user can configure more settings than in older versions. The preferences area can be used on PC's with more than one user too. Not every user can change all settings, e.g. only administrators can change update behaviour. The UAC of windows Vista and 7 has been taken into account. A user will see a message if a property page can't be selected because of limited rights. There is also the possibility to elevate a user if the user is an administrator to do all changes.
Program restructured:
The PDF Creator has been restructured to make ready the program for future developments.
PDF Viewer in PDF Editor enhanced:
There could be a dealock in some circiumstances in PDF viewer. The problem has been fixed. Furthermore you can navigiate through pages with arrow keys now.
File explorer in PDF editor enhanced:
The explorer supports shortcuts/links now. The explorer can be hided so that only the document list is shown up. There are appropriate menu entries to hide or show the explorer.
Program settings strictly separated from user settings:
The settings of the program and the settings of a user are strictly separated now. Every user can change his PDF creator so that it suits his requirements. The changed will be saved in user profiles. Only administrators can change settings which concerns the whole program.
Document to PDF converter tool supports shortcuts/links now:
The component which is responsible for converting documents to PDF now supports shortcuts/links in file system. In addition a bug in the tool has been fixed.
Updater extended:
The updater of the PDF24 Creator has beed redesigned and extended. The user user guidance has been changed to. The updater supports multi user environments now. Users with limited rights can execute the updater to look for updates, but they can't install ones. This is reserved for administrators.
PDF signature bug under Windows Vista and Windows 7 fixed:
There was a bug in signature process when signing a PDF file under Windows Vista and Windows 7. Partly the signature was incorrect. The bug is fixed. PDF signatures are correct now. Signatures can be checked in Adobe Reader.
Signature time bug fixed:
The time of a signature process was not saved correctly. The problem was time offset for time zones. The bug is fixed.
Enhanced installer:
The installer of the PDF24 Creator has been enhanced. The installer searches for active components now. If a components is active the installer notifies the user that all components have to be closed. The installer only installs an update/new version if all components are closed. This works also in a multi user environment. As long as any user has a running components the installer blocks installations.
PDF editor can be started with a file:
The PDF24 Editor can be started with a file, e.g. drag & drop a file to the PDF24 editor icon. This was disallowed in older versions. The start file will automatically be loaded in editor and becomes converted if the files wasn't a PDF.