Adobe Acrobat vs. Solid PDF Creator Plus: Password Protect an Existing PDF File

This comparison focuses on encrypting and password protecting an existing PDF file using Solid PDF Creator Plus and Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional.

Both applications are more than up to the task. However, using the default settings of Adobe Acrobat require that you click through many popup windows to accomplish your goal.

Solid PDF Creator Plus is designed to reduce the amount of time it takes to accomplish a task, while at the same time protecting the end user from doing something that they may regret (overwriting an existing PDF file, making a typo in a password, providing undo wherever practical, etc.).

Please note that there are ways to crack password protection in PDF files. Although there is no perfect way to protect a PDF file, following the instructions below should protect your PDF file from most end users.


Solid PDF Creator Plus:

1. Open the PDF file you wish to protect in Solid PDF Creator Plus.

2. Go into Document | Document Properties | Security:



3. Check "Require user password to open the document":



4. Type in the password you want to secure the document with twice and click OK.

5. Save the file.

Your file will now require that you supply the password you entered in order to open it.


Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional:

1. Open the PDF file you wish to protect in Adobe Acrobat.

2. Go into Advanced | Security | Password Encrypt:



3. Click Yes:



4. Check "require a password to open the document".

5. Type in the password you want to secure the document with and click OK:



6. In the popup window that appears, type in the password again and click OK.

7. Click OK:



8. Save the file.

Your file will now require that you supply the password you entered in order to open it.

Adobe Acrobat vs. Solid PDF Creator Plus: Extracting Pages from a PDF File

This comparison focuses on extracting pages 1-10 and 20-30 from a PDF file and placing it in a new PDF file.

Why would you want to do this? You might have a price list or catalog that you want to customize for a customer. Or you might have some documentation that is rather large and you only need to refer to certain sections of it. Whatever your reason you can use both Solid PDF Creator Plus and Adobe Acrobat to accomplish this goal.

Adobe Acrobat allows you to do this with some effort. You need to extract each set of pages as PDF files, save them and then use a wizard to combine them into a single PDF file. In Solid PDF Creator Plus you simply select the page range you want to extract and in one easy step the pages are extracted into one PDF file ready to be saved. As a result performing this task in Solid PDF Creator Plus is both simpler and faster than in Adobe Acrobat.

Solid PDF Creator Plus:

1. Open the original PDF file in Solid PDF Creator Plus:



2. Go into Document | Extract Pages:



3. Select the page range (1-10,20-30) and click OK:



4. Your new PDF file will open in Solid PDF Creator Plus:



5. Save it if you are happy with it.


Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional:

1. Open the original PDF file in Adobe Acrobat:



2. Go into Document | Extract Pages:



3. Select a page range of 1-10 and click OK:



4. A new PDF file will appear in a new Adobe Acrobat Window. Save the file and close it:



5. Back in the original PDF file go into Document | Extract Pages.

6. Select a page range of 20-30 and click OK:



7. Save the second new file and close it:



8. Click Combine Files:



9. Click Add Files, select the files you extracted in the window that appears and click Add Files:



10. Select your compression options and click Next:



11. Select Merge files into a single PDF and click Create:



12. Review your new PDF file. Assuming that you're happy with it click Save:



13. Name your file and click Save:

CutePDF Professional vs. Solid PDF Creator Plus: Deleting a Page in a PDF File

This comparison focuses on deleting an individual page from a PDF file using CutePDF Professional and Solid PDF Creator Plus. If you haven't yet read the first post in this series, we recommend that you do so to see how Solid PDF Creator Plus performs. We also have a complete feature comparison of the free version of CutePDF verses Solid PDF Creator and Solid PDF Creator Plus which is well worth reading.

CutePDF allows you to delete a single page from a PDF file, and so does Solid PDF Creator Plus. The main difference between them is in how you are forced to accomplish the task. In Solid PDF Creator Plus you can simply select a page and press delete. In Cute PDF Professional you have to go through several menus to delete a single page.

If you need to perform complicated or large operations, a menu is really useful (We put one for deleting pages in Solid PDF Creator Plus for this reason). When you just need to work with a page or two, a WYSIWYG interface is faster, more intuitive and easier to use.

CutePDF Professional:

1. Open PDF file in Cute PDF Professional:



2. Click Page Tool | Delete Pages:



3. Select the Page you wish to delete and click OK:



.. and the page is deleted.

4. If you need to undo the operation, you can click the undo button:

Adobe Acrobat vs. Solid PDF Creator Plus: Deleting a Page in a PDF File

As we just released a new PDF creation and modification utility (Solid PDF Creator Plus), we thought it might be helpful to compare how certain features of the product compare with our competitor's products.

This comparison focuses on deleting an individual page from a PDF file using Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional and Solid PDF Creator Plus.

Although both applications allow you to delete pages, Adobe Acrobat does not let you undo a page deletion. Rather, each time you attempt to delete a page it offers a pop-up message that you need to click to confirm that you really want to delete it.

Solid PDF Creator Plus allows you to delete pages as needed. Should you make a mistake you can easily reverse the change by using undo.

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional:

1. Open PDF file and click the Pages button:



2. Select a page and press the delete key.

3. Click OK when prompted:


(Click image for full size view)

...and the page is deleted:



4. Decide that you want to undo the page deletion? Unfortunately, this isn't available in Acrobat.


Solid PDF Creator Plus:

1. Open PDF file and click the Pages button:



2. Select a page and press the delete key.

...and the page is deleted:



3. Decide that you want to undo the page deletion? Go into Edit | Undo and the page will be put back:

What is the PDF File Format?

If a file has an extension of .pdf then it most likely using the Portable Document Format (PDF), developed by Adobe Systems, Inc. PDF files maintain the original document formatting for both printing and viewing on a multiple computing platforms, including Windows, UNIX and Mac.

Viewing PDFs

An easy way to view PDF files is to download the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader,which is free software for viewing and printing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files on major hardware and operating system platforms.

PDF Navigation Features

Certain features built into the PDF specification allow authors to expand the usefulness of a document. For example, you can add bookmarks, thumbnails of each page, internal and external links, form fields, article threads, buttons for navigation, notes to annotate information, and views to magnify or reduce a page to fit within the user's computer screen. PDF allows users to magnify up to 800% on screen with no loss of clarity.

PDF Size and Performance

For the Web, smaller files are better since download time depends on file size. PDF files can be optimized to reduce file sizes and can create files up to 80% smaller than their HTML counterparts.

PDF files can be "linearized" to allow the user to start viewing the document before it is fully downloaded, similar to the process used to deliver streaming video over the internet.

PDF can be interwoven seamlessly into most Web sites. This combination of HTML and PDF formats enables authors to serve content in its most appropriate format based on the demands of content versus technology. Also, on most popular Web servers there is no compression, translation, or filtering penalty for serving PDF files.

PDF Security

PDF has a well-established security feature set. Authors of PDF files can prevent users from editing, printing, and/or copying content (text and graphics). Software developers can create their own software to read, create, or modify PDF files without special permission or licensing. The only condition that Adobe insists on is that the document author's PDF security settings be respected.