Solid PDF Creator - I don't see my printer driver anymore

Microsoft has some new patches out for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 and their various server releases that breaks many printer drivers. Our Solid PDF Creator may have disappeared from your choice of printer after this update.

We have fixed the issue that Microsoft took offence to with printer drivers and have released a new version of Solid PDF Creator on our free PDF Creator website.

For more details on the Microsoft patch:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3170455

Solid PDF to Word for Mac - Version 2.1

We have released an update to Solid PDF to Word for Mac - version 2.1.

Read more ...

Version 9 is available

Solid Documents has just released version 9 of all our Windows software products:

Desktop Software:

Solid Converter v9
Solid PDF Tools v9
Solid PDF/A Express v9
Solid PDF to Word v9
Solid Scan to Word v9

Process Automation:
Solid Automator v9
Solid Commander v9

Free, fully functional trials are available on our website.

Changes

New features include File | Print, Search and a new scanner interface (supporting TWAIN and WIA drivers). 

We continue to focus on improvements to our industry leading PDF conversion engine, OCR and overall document reconstruction process. 

PDF Files - Converting to Word

Question: When I convert a PDF file to a Word document not all of the characters are correct.  Why does this happen?

Answer: Not all PDFs are made the same way.

PDFs - you can say there are basically two types of PDF files - scanned from paper and created on a computer.

Scanned PDFs - pages are images. OCR (optical character recognition) has to look at all the dots of ink and figure out what is what.

Based on patterns our software tries to determine characters, images, font, etc. Some dots can be noise or can be diacritics. We try to figure this out as best we can. Quality of scan and font type certainly affect analysis and success of detection. 

Computer generated PDFs - usually these types of PDFs include font information (PDFs are built with mapping/encoding details, they do not include characters, words, sentences, paragraphs, headers/footers, details). We figure all this stuff out and reconstruct the document with structure. Some PDF creators do not use standard encoding so we have to again do some detective work to try and determine what is in the PDF. If the font has been computer generated and we have details included in the PDF and the computer you convert to Microsoft Word has the same font installed, then you should get these other fonts in the Word file. For example, we convert CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) PDFs that have been computer generated into correct Word documents.

Fonts - if we have the information from the PDF or we determine the language/font and it includes diacritics we use the correct characters for the font/language. We have done a lot of work to support foreign languages with our OCR and again, with our standard PDF conversion software.

Forcing OCR on computer generated PDFs - turning on text recovery for all characters and pages forces all PDFs through our OCR processing which is not the best solution. With non-standard encoded documents it can provide a better conversion, but if your PDF is a standard computer generated one then our default document reconstruction processing is best.

What is Non-Standard Encoding?

Let's start by looking at what standard encoding is and how it works.

Each English alphabetical and numerical character A, B, C or 1, 2, 3 and so on has a corresponding ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) Decimal or Hexadecimal code associated with it. Microsoft Word, Notepad and plain text editors use ASCII to display the desired characters.

Read more »

Batch Processing with Solid Commander

Looking for an automated batch processing solution for PDF processing? Try Solid Commander - automated PDF to Word conversion, PDF/A validation, PDF to PDF/A conversion, searchable PDF creation and text extraction.

Take a video tour and learn more.

Solid PDF to Word for Mac v2 - OSX 10.9 support

Solid PDF to Word for Mac v2 works with the latest OS X Maverick operating system.

To run the Mac PDF to Word converter, your Mac must meet the following requirements:

• A Mac computer with an Intel processor
• Requires Mac OS X v10.6, v10.7, v10.8, v10.9
• 150 MB of available hard disk space
• iWork Pages required to create .pages documents from converted .docx documents

PDF/A1-b or PDF/A-2b?

Question: Is it recommended to use PDF/A1-b or PDF/A-2b?

Answer: PDF/A-1 is based on PDF version 1.4.  PDF/A-2 is based on the latest PDF standard which supports more functionality and better compression than the older format (compressed object streams and compressed cross reference streams for example). With this in mind, we recommend PDF/A-2b.

What makes it a PDF?

Often people will ask "What is a PDF file?" or "How do you View a PDF File?". These lead to a couple of basic answers.

Read more »

DOCX is Not a Portable Document Format

We have had some customers wonder why .docx files display differently in Microsoft Office on OSX versus Office on Windows.

Fonts

Layout in all documents depends upon font metrics. There are vertical and horizontal font metrics. Even if horizontal metrics look the same, the vertical metrics can be so different that the text line with the substituted font takes more or less vertical space than it does for the original font. This affects the layout of the entire document.

Mac OSX has its own set of fonts that are not available on Windows. If you have Office installed on OSX then it also adds typical Microsoft Office fonts. The Mac has a super-set of fonts and that means that documents converted on Windows  have more chances to be displayed well on Mac than vice versa.

Windows and OSX

Microsoft Word is a word processor. While it has powerful formatting and design functionality it was never written to maintain the original document formatting for printing and viewing on multiple computer platforms. This is the purpose of PDF - Portable Document Format.

v8 has New User Interface

v8 includes a new and improved user interface where the core tasks are easily available.

Solid PDF Tools v8 User Interface

The v8 rewrite was a conscious shift back to our core features : a focus on document reconstruction functionality. 

Adding new features to the product going forward is prioritized by customer requests so please send your feedback to support@soliddocuments.com.

The v8 rewrite was required to take advantage of 64-bit architectures and multi-core processors. A rewrite using Microsoft .NET was required so that we could engineer the product using our own Solid Framework SDK (unlike the older products which were based on a legacy architecture).

Watch our getting started video.

New Version 8 Available

We have released version 8!

Solid Converter PDF and Solid PDF Tools helps you improve, create and convert PDFs into Word and Excel in addition to other file formats, resulting in accurate, high quality documents that are easy to reuse. 

Included in this version 8 release are two process automation applications: Solid Automator and Solid Commander. Solid Documents has also released three new applications with specific functionality: Solid PDF to Word, Solid Scan to Word and Solid PDF/A Express.

"The v8 rewrite was a conscious shift back to our core features : a focus on document reconstruction functionality" said Michael Cartwright, CEO of Solid Documents. "The v8 rewrite was required to take advantage of 64-bit architectures and multi-core processors. A rewrite using Microsoft .NET was required so that we could engineer the products using our own Solid Framework SDK (unlike the older products which were based on a legacy architecture)."

Getting started videos are available, along with other product feature tutorials.

PDF/A-1 vs. PDF/A-2

PDF/A is an archiving standard that was published in 2005 by ISO. PDF/A-1 was based on the original Adobe PDF 1.4 version. This version set the standard for ensuring that PDF content could always be visually reproduced regardless of future changes to viewing and printing technology.

PDF/A-2 was released by ISO in July 2011. PDF/A-1 files are compliant archive documents and do not need to be converted to the new standard. PDF/A-2 does not replace the PDF/A-1 standard.

So, what is the difference between these two standards you might ask.

PDF/A-1 is based on PDF version 1.4 (based on Adobe PDF specifications).

PDF/A-2 is based on the ISO standard 32000-1 and takes advantage of features that came after the Adobe PDF 1.4 specification.

What is new in PDF/A-2:

1. JPEG2000 compression (benefits for scanned color documents)
2. Embedded PDF/A files via collections/portfolios
3. Transparency
4. Optional content (layers): useful for mapping or engineering drawings or documents with multiple languages (implement different content on different layers)
5. Unicode support (PDF/A-2U)
6. Object level XMP metadata (new requirements for custom metadata)
7. Comments and annotations (defined list of acceptable and prohibited annotation and comment types for PDF/A-2)
8. Digital signature rules defined.

If you need the features and benefits of the new standard you can start creating or converting your PDF files to PDF/A-2b using Solid PDF Tools version 7.3.

Read more about PDF Standards here.

Solid Converter PDF 7.3 Released

Solid Documents has just released version 7.3 of Solid Converter PDF and Solid PDF Tools. Improvements in version 7.3 include:

• Solid OCR (optical character recognition) now supports 8 languages (English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish).
• PDF to Word: heading/style detection, table of contents reconstruction, hierarchical list reconstruction.
• Complete rework of PDF to PowerPoint reconstruction including transitions, master slides and PowerPoint specific layout engine.
• Great improvements to PDF to HTML conversion to take advantage of table of contents reconstruction and style detection. Single page output with navigation frame or multiple linked HTML pages for navigation.

Download Solid Converter PDF - 15 day fully functional trial version (we only watermark output while in trial mode)
Download Solid PDF Tools

Macworld reviews Solid PDF to Word for Mac

Great little article about our Mac software product (Solid PDF to Word for Mac) on Macworld:

How to convert PDFs to Word (and other formats)

Thanks Kirk McElhearn for the review!

PDF: Electronic Recycling

Did you know that PDF files are environmentally friendly? Not only do they save trees and time by being secure electronic documents rather than printed papers cluttering up the desk, but they can be recycled and reused!

With tools such as Solid Converter PDF and Solid PDF Tools, you can easily extract and reuse content from PDF files that you or others have created. This includes being able to extract tables to Microsoft Excel, convert the content to Microsoft Word or extract images to a separate file.

Don't need to recycle the whole PDF file? You can also extract single pages into a new PDF file or selectively extract images and/or text into Word or Excel.

Solid Converter PDF v7 Released

We have released version 7 of Solid Converter® PDF (for Windows). Lots of new features and improvements.

Solid Converter PDF helps you improve, create and convert PDFs into Word and Excel as well as other file formats, resulting in accurate, high quality documents that are easy to reuse. Enhanced features include the ability to: convert PDF files into .docx, .xlsx or .pptx formats without requiring Microsoft® Office®, table improvements, recover text markup, and extract data from PDF files to .CSV files. It includes 256 AES encryption, selective conversion and more.

Check out all the features of Solid Converter PDF here. Read the press release.

By the way, we have also updated Solid PDF Tools, Solid PDF Creator Plus and Solid PDF Creator to version 7.

Adobe Licenses Solid Documents Technology for Acrobat X

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe) has licensed Solid Framework SDK for Adobe® Acrobat® X. Adobe Acrobat X takes advantage of Solid Documents’ PDF to Word and Excel conversion capabilities, allowing Acrobat X users to easily reuse and repurpose PDF content.

Read the press release here.

Recent rave reviews for Solid Framework’s core conversion features in the new Adobe Acrobat X:

Ed Mendelson of PC Magazine:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2370981,00.asp

Darryl K. Taft of eWeek:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Adobe-Acrobat-X-10-Reasons-to-Move-to-It-Now-179555/

Alan Stafford of PC World:
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/707770/review/acrobat_x_pro.html

PDF for Lawyers:
http://www.pdfforlawyers.com/2010/10/improved-export-to-word-in-acrobat-x.html
http://www.pdfforlawyers.com/2010/10/adobe-announces-acrobat-10-my-quick-review.html

Steven Kovach of Business Insider:
http://www.businessinsider.com/hands-on-with-adobe-acrobat-x-pro-2010-11

Quick editing tips - Text from PDF into Word

Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word have different methods for displaying text within their files. Font sizes have much finer granularity in Acrobat then in Word for example. Solid Converter PDF and Solid PDF Tools have to make choices when converting PDF text into Word text so that the document formatting and layout are maintained. This might mean adjusting the character spacing to help make it “fit” in Word.

If you are seeing unequal spacing in your document you can quickly do the following:

1. Select all text
2. Choose Format Font Character Spacing and select 100%.

New 7.0 of Solid Framework Released

Newest version enhances conversion and reconstruction features; Gives developers power to build applications for the creation, modification and conversion of PDF files within 64-bit native environment.

See full press release here.