PDF files- can't live with them and you can't leave without them. The PDF file format is, in my opinion, one of the best there are on the market. You can scan books and save them as .pdf, it allows you to insert pictures, drawings, etc. but what I am most excited about is the order of the text.

All these have a price and that is the size of the output file and the loading time. But we already know that quality comes expensive. Well, for those that do not have the necessary resources to store the .pdf files on the hard drive, or those that simply want to move faster when it comes to text editing, there is a simple solution designed to convert all PDF to simple text (.txt files).

The name of one of the softwares that are capable of such a conversion is PDF Plain Text Extractor. The version we are going to analyze is 4.3. This little conversion tool comes at the price of $59.95. The only limitations of the shareware version are that it cannot handle more than five .pdf pages and the software will only work for fifteen days.

The graphical user interface is not one thing the software can brag about. That oldish Windows 98 aspect went out of fashion a long time ago, but hey, "don't judge a book by its covers". We have to focus on the functionality of the application and not on its looks.

Apart from the retro looks of the software, the program has an easy to use interface, designed to be used by any category of users. Knowing a little English is enough to make your way through the options. The main application window is divided into four major panels: upper and lower left panels and the upper and lower right panels. Each of them is almost equally important in your converting task.

The first one (upper left) permits you to browse through the drives and folders of your computer. If the selected folder contains a PDF file, it will automatically be displayed in the lower left panel.

The upper right panel is where you add the files you want to convert. Notice that I used the plural. That's because the software is capable of converting more than one file at once. All there is to it is select all the files you want to convert, right-click and choose "Convert all".

The Settings menu will appear immediately after you decide to convert the files. The user has the options of outputting the process detail information, the time the software takes to process the files- to select certain pages to be converted (or all of them) enter the page breaker and the page number. Next, you get to select the output folder which can be either the same as the original or a user defined one.

There is no need to give a name to the output file as the software will automatically import the name from the original .pdf file. Press Finish and you are done.

In the lower right panel, the application will display the metadata the PDF file contains, meaning the title of the file, subject, creator, producer (the software with which the file was produced with), the creation date and the keywords of the file. Of course, all these, except for the creator section, will be available only if the user has completed the required fields.

The toolbar of the software contains all of the above mentioned options, but the only difference is that they are represented by icons.

There is a feature that will come in handy if you need to convert a batch of .pdf files to simple text files on a regular basis. It is called Convert List. The user has to "load" the PDF files that need to be converted and save them as a converting list. And when you need to transform the same files into text, all you have to do is open the convert list and proceed to the extraction.


The Good

The software is small and easy to use. The user should make no effort in finding all the secrets and the options- the Help menu will give you all the needed answers.


The Bad

The software seems to scramble the text if the PDF files contain pictures. If the PDF files contain text that is arranged into a table layout, the software will extract only the metadata of the PDF file.

Maybe I am being paranoid, but the price, in my opinion, is too high. I've seen softwares that did the same thing at up to half the price.


The Truth

The truth is that the software does a pretty good job, apart from the above mentioned mischiefs. The problem of the price still stands and also the fact that the text gets displaced a little when it comes to extracting from PDFs containing pictures.

The good part is that the power users can benefit from the command line support of the software, thus reducing the computer memory usage.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: