I know this is a bit late, but after playing around with this software, I've come to realise that my old faithful is more powerful and it's open source: PDF Split and Merge (http://www.pdfsam.org).
Example, this new software can only split a PDF into single pages. PDFSAM can split into single pages, every nth page, odd pages, even pages, etc.

Installed PDF Composer to see what it could do. .NET v4 and registered no problem, but I know what to do. Have used GOTD before.
(Zoner Photo Studio is awesome for data management.)
So with no expectations was blown away. No help file nor manual made it tricky to learn. Right click to see what is possible. Have been using on PDF project of 60 files and its awesome.

To make PDF searchable.
Convert PDF to JPEGs or PNGs using PDF Composer.
Then re convert JPEGs to PDF (searchable) produces a folder full of searchable PDFs about x8 size of original PDF.
Finally MERGE searchable PDFs to produce one searchable PDF. Ensure individual PDFs are in right order by dragging, otherwise rearrange PDF pages using PDF Composer. Files are stored in sub-folder of original PDF. Use a proper file manager showing extensions, not M$ own. eg x2Explorer
OCR in PDF Composer finds majority of words. Not perfect, very good.

Ensure JPEGs are correct orientation before OCR, otherwise OCR will not work.
Conversion to JPEG is quick. Conversion to searchable PDF takes x5 longer. Merging and rearranging are near instant.

This program works on PDF files and pix for OCR to PDF (200 dpi) and excellent at that. Does everything I need.

Now realise why during conversion, dialogue box stays on top of all windows to give process maximum priority. So do not do anything else processor intensive at same time.

Tried it and it worken fine.Split a PDF-file of 588 pages in 588 small PDF-files within second. Merged three 0ne-page file into one again and that too worked splendid. Thanks.

add a button to open the file you have just created, or/also add a button to open the folder of the file you made

PDFSAM is the very best alternative only java required

#48

No, frankly I don't expect a program costing a pittance compared to paying Adobe a small fortune to have as many features nor to be as easy to use or navigate.

Yes, we might like more or better features, but at what cost? And if authors like for today's GOTD can improve their product further, then great! But I certainly don't expect their initial offering to be perfect! Software design takes a long time and costs a huge lot of money!

Suggestions are great and very well received, but in practice, many may simply be unrealistic for a company such as this!

The people making the suggestions are not likely to be aware of how much re-design might be needed, nor how much this might cost!

I'm not belittling suggestions, just saying that what some might think as easy to implement, might in fact be difficult or very difficult, or implausible to actually carry out!

Yes please let's have suggestions, but just be aware that only the program developer can assess how much redevelopment they might need and whether this is actually worth their time and effort.

I also get fed up with criticism that borders on trying to find fault at every turn rather than being useful constructive criticism!

#21

For most of us, the full version of Adobe Acrobat is very prohibitively expensive. On this basis, today's GOTD is really excellent, and minor shortcomings in the user interface are very insignificant in comparison with paying a huge amount for a program by Adobe that probably cost millions to develop.

You are not comparing like with like, which really is meaningless! One might expect a very expensive program like Adobe Acrobat to have 'bells and whistles', but it also carries a massive amount of bloatware from Adobe!

I will gladly put up with very minor 'irritations' for a program that costs barely a fraction of what Adobe Acrobat full version costs, as I am sure many GOTD fans will also!

:) Sweet Utility for Me- Thanks GOTD for getting this 1 in yer Que !
Vista Home,double core/2 GB-huhso,& why wouldn't I have .net installed?-well, I use MS products, it goes with the turf.
I 4 1 do download alot of info & ebook type documents that have way too much info that sometimes has nothing to do with my personal needs or interest-..my own lil library drive is getting bloated with useless info that takes too long to sort thru...and presto, I tried 1 such pdf doc, had this sweet tool remove the 5 pages I actually wanted, it filed them away nicely in my documents so I can rename & refile in my lil warped system & I gets to discard almost 7mb of useless data for me....and that's just 1 of many ....man it is now time for some spring housecleaning & pruning in my library drive !!
*and for me, this was about the best & most pro install I have seen on my trail of being a 'yea, I'll give it a try guy'- one 'burp' on the registration, but I just closed the program, waited a couple of seconds & reopened it, yep- the prepopulated reg window reappeard, I clicked & success.

What a huge waste of time and effort...and if it weren't offered here today. money. Give PDF Tools from SheelApps a try. It is MUCH better and completely free all the time. It can encrypt, decrypt, join, split, stamp, create and rearrange a PDF file. I use it on a regular basis and it works excellent.

http://sheelapps.com/index.php?p=PDFTools.HomePage

Take a look and judge for yourself.

ANY program that can print to any selected printer (not restricted to LPTn) can create a PDF -- just install "dopdf" for free.

Addressing some issues raised here, I wonder if people who claim PDF Composer doesn't work are paying attention to where it puts files and folders.

.NET has a lot of advantages. It's supposed to be programming language neutral, although in reality it carries weaknesses from C-based languages. When you target .NET, you're targeting .NET and not the Windows API. .NET isn't tied to Windows, and has been implemented on other platforms. You have your choice of whether it's compiled just-in-time or pre-compiled.

There are so few UI elements, PDF Composer doesn't need a Help file. There are tooltips for the UI elements, and for the actions all you have to do is try it and see what it does.

Having used it more, my opinion has dropped. The Composer gets cumbersome when working with more than a few pages due to the fact that it doesn't support standard Windows multi-select operations (the File Open dialog boxes do) and doesn't auto-scroll the targets. The Extractor only extracts into individual pages. You can Merge those, but that's an extra step and it's sensitive to the file order displayed in Windows Explorer when doing group selections.

For some simple tasks and creating searchable PDFs, I think that PDF Composer is simple to use. More features need to be added, the UI needs to be improved, and the price needs to be lowered.

Why do people such as #1 regard editing a .PDF an essential requirement nowadays? If a PDF document needs editing then do it in the originating program. The portable document format was designed specifically to guarantee a graphic artist that the finished document would look the same no matter what (postscript) printer or platemaker it was output on. Its advantage of being a "fixed" file format meant that nobody could mess around with or plagarise the design.

Downloaded and installed without any trouble on Vista Business 32. Test Split PDF into 2 files very quickly. Cannot convert Doc to PDF! Functions however are so limited for such price of $49!!! But if you just need to merge or split PDF, or convert photos to PDF, grap this one when it s free like now.

I have tested quite a few PDF tools. Of course Adobe's is best but too expensive and heavy. As someone mentioned above, I find PDFill tools are free, light and gives excellent quality, and does much more than this GATD. I think PDFill is the best in quality among PDF tools freeware (try several free ones to convert a Doc file containing a picture inside to PDF and you will see the quality by PDFill!).

Loaded and registered without a problem. Tried it on spitting and conversion, did a great job. Impressive program, thanks GOTD.

I'm a little concerned to see a number of comments from users with Windows XP SP2. For those of you that ARE still using XP with SP2, please be aware that you are NOT receiving the Windows Updates you really DO need, as Microsoft no longer supports SP2. I seriously suggest updating to SP3 to resume and continue getting the essential security updates until MS abandons XP altogether.

Is there any possibility that a similar program is available in Linux?
I use both Ubuntu and Windows 7. To work with PDF's, I always go back to Windows.

There were a couple of posts about .NET 4 on XP SP2... here's a link to a threat at the msdn forums about someone who did apparently add it to their SP2 machines -- Google/Bing for more of the same.
http://goo.gl/lVQd9

So many people saying this can't make a PDF from a WORD doc. Well, WORD can save any doc into a PDF by itself, so it should not be a requirement that this do it too...

PDF Composer is a small utility that almost could have been designed to address the wish lists when PDF Combine was on GOTD the other day -- it lets you combine, split up, rearrange, & encrypt the PDF files you've already got... it also lets you convert images to PDF & vice versa. If your existing PDF contains an image [as opposed to text], if you combine it with a text PDF it'll still be an image, just like the text will still be text. Design wise, PDF Composer uses a launcher similar in concept to the launchers used by Roxio & Nero suites, or the Wise PC Engineer that was on GOTD recently -- starting the app you get one window where you select which job you want to do. More in the interest of eye candy PDF Composer uses D3D, which makes it not work in some places, sluggish in others -- kind of like the animated wallpaper apps on GOTD from time to time, works fine in win7 ult 64 SP1 with an AMD quad, 6 GB RAM, & a nice graphics card, but I'd be [very] hesitant to suggest it to anyone else unless I knew they had a more powerful rig. PDF Composer also uses Internet Explorer, & doesn't appear to have a problem with ie9.

As noted early on PDF Composer requires .NET 4.0... in case it's useful I monitored the .NET 4 client install to a XP Pro SP3 VM -- going through Microsoft Update, downloading/installing the ~30 MB KB982670 the results are: 873 files added, 4 files deleted. 73 files updated, 7876 registry entries added, 2 registry entries deleted, 2535 registry entries updated. I had .NET 4 already installed on our PCs for other reasons, including software that uses it... if my only reason for adding the v. 4 update was to run PDF Composer, no thanks.

Installing PDF Composer the 1st screen just tells you that your system doesn't meet requirements -- the next screen tells you that you need .NET 4... Realizing this will sound like nit-picking to some, that struck me as stupid frankly -- why not do like countless other apps, state your requirements up front on your web page, then on the 1st screen say hey, you don't have this, click next & we'll install it or hit cancel & install it yourself? It's not a big deal at all, really, but with the majority of apps handling prerequisites that better way, it just seems silly not to follow their lead. Something else the devs could copy is using a D3D test routine to make sure PDF Composer will run -- if your app's not going to run in top form everywhere, it would seem much easier, more efficient to get that cause out of the way right up front so customer support doesn't have to.

Actual installation isn't *too* bad, though IMHO it's overkill for what this utility actually does -- long story short you get 500 or so new registry entries in XP Pro, win7 32, & win7 64, which is an awful lot for an uninstall key & adding the app to the context menu... many apps manage that with less than 2 dozen. The program's folder itself holds 22 files in 5 folders totaling ~13 MB, plus you get a folder under All Users Application Data or ProgramData [XP/7] -- change the settings & they're stored under User Local Settings Application Data or User App Data Local [XP/7]. 2 files, 1 folder are added to Windows\Installer, & as with many, many apps, you get to delete the desktop icon [note to all devs, if you don't already, ask -- for those that do ask, THANK YOU].

Personally I tend to work with PDFs because it's a standard that most everyone else uses & can use, not because I like the format terribly. When PDF Combine was on GOTD it occurred to me that I could make some stuff more efficient by combining docs, & honestly I'm not sure I'd use PDF Composer for more than that, but I'll give it a whirl & see over time which app wins out. 1st though I'll modify the way it's set up -- some like everything added to context menus, but I want my context menus to stay small & manageable, & I don't feel I need 100s of new registry entries to delete at most 3 folders & a shortcut should it lose the match with PDF Combine.

A PDF-Composer shoul FIRST OF ALL convert PDF to an EDIZABLE Format.
I had no problems exporting to PDF from Open Office, oO1.1.5 to 3.xx, (with embedded .jpg Tables, drawings..). In oO1.1.5 to 3.x rearranging edited pages, or selecting parts (split) even across page-bounderies is all familiar.
PDF-Composer seems not to provide even usefull PDF-Rearranging.
How can I force the used parts of fonts (e.g. MS Arial Unicode, which is not available to all my readers) to be included in the PDF-output?

THIS would be a useful feature for me.

Why is there NO andwers by the maker to many good questions above? Or clarifying comments.

At present I am not interested in this GAOTD

After reinstalling twice, I still get the error, 'This application has failed to start because MSVCR100_CLR400.dll was not found. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.'

I have XP 64. Any ideas?

#38 "Is there a good reason it cannot be installed on XP SP2?"

Just one idea:
1/ PDF Composer require-> Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0;
2/ Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 require-> Windows XP SP3.

The OCR function does not work, I was able to split a PDF and it is pretty quick. But not worth buying if the OCR does not work.

Someone has made the very ill-advised comment that people who can afford Adobe Acrobat should not be concerned about the quality and capability of free or less expensive pdf programs. The answer to that comment goes to all software and not merely pdfs.

1. Many people have two or more computers in a household or office and cannot afford to buy Acrobat for each of them.

2. One always hopes that some competitor will increase the functionality or efficiency of pdf creation and modification.

3. All of us exchange pdfs with others, and it impacts all of us if a pdf is defective or if our correspondents cannot use their software effectively.

4. The comment segment of this site is to share insights. It would seem to me that everyone would be interested in the insights of persons who are familiar with the operations of software that sets the standard.

5. When there are as many deficits in a program as there are in the design and substance of this program, one can reasonably expect that there are non-obvious deficits that may do serious damage to your data or your computer or to other software your own.

Additionally, all of the deficits that are noted by some others, such as the failure to actually create a pdf file, and the inability to fine tune the result in functions such as splitting, have also been experienced by me.

The lack of a manual or a help file borders on the absurd. Why would anyone create a program such as this and not provide a manual? If the problem is that one exists in German, there is a high degree of English language proficiency in German, and, in any event, a manual pumped through the Google translator would be better than no manual at all.

As regards manuals, I wish those software providers who only provide an integrated help file, that one must laboriously summon up, topic by topic, would also produce a pdf version of the help file or an otherwise appropriate pdf manual. For the author to create such a pdf version would be very easy if he or she has created a help file. I suspect, that, in some cases, the lack of a manual is simply the result of a poor understanding of user support. In other cases it is a reflection of the fact that the author is not capable of fleshing out the operation of his program.

Does gotd have standards that they are prepared to share with us concerning the minimum requirements of software that is posted. The argument that it is "free" makes no sense. Many of us have paid a hard price for "free" programs.

Installed and registered. Allowed me to select files to merge and split. Says it merged the files chosen and says it split (even created a sub-directory) but created neither merged nor split files.

Since I found PDF-XChange Viewer I realized nothing else out there was even close, not Adobe (for sure), not Foxit, nothing else even comes close to the quality and features in this and it's got a portable version. From their web site: "Those wishing to View/Modify or perform simple editing of PDF files on their Windows PC's now have a FREE alternative! The PDF-XChange Viewer is smaller, faster and more feature rich than any other FREE PDF Reader/Viewer/Editor available. This version also allows users to try the extended functionality offered by the PDF-XChange Viewer 'PRO' in evaluation mode - for free. No PDF reader or Viewer offers more features than PDF-XChange"

you should not claim to be all in one when it's really not...and you should mention not only the .net framework but also the version number of it so that who ever not interested to install that framework skip this installation.

Micke #2 & Meek #25:
"Dutchland" does not exist! If you would read correctly, you would realise there says "Deutschland", which means "Germany" in German, as "Deutsch" means "German".
Cheers,
Melitta

Hi all!!

Nice APP but, as I had already said a couple of days ago commenting another GAOTD similar to this, why pay 50 BUCKS for tools like this if you can do the same things (or even more) with FREE TOOLS like PDFill PDF Tools??

Big Mystery...LOL!!

PDFill PDF Tools works great and does more than this GAOTD without asking you a dime...LOL!!

With this nice tool you can not only Merge & Split PDF pages but also Reorder, Encrypt, Decrypt, Rotate, Crop, Reformat, Header, Footer & Watermark them, as well as convert Images to PDF, PDF to Images and PostScript files into PDF so that a PDF Reader can read it.

You can even delete, flatten or list the PDF Form Fields inside a PDF file.

Did I mention that it’s FREE both for Personal and COMMERCIAL use??


http://www.4all2all.net/2009/03/pdf-tools-merge-split-encrypt-rotate.html


Enjoy!!

PS to my previous comment: I have no reason to believe that PDF Composer's failure to work on my machine is in any way related to Microsoft .NET Framework 4. I have Microsoft .NET Framework 4 installed, and it works fine with other .NET-dependent software I have installed.

#28: "This may be a silly question – but as to the comments about it requiring .NET – does that mean a full paid for installation of some sort – or is it like Java – that somehow works on my pc without having to have done a major install. "

#29: "What is wrong with you people? I have been using the different versions of net framework for years and never had any problems. Worse aggravation is that it takes up some hard drive space. There are no boogey men hiding in net."

Google/Bing & you'll see plenty of debate, pros/cons etc... (over?) simplified, .NET takes up where VB [Visual Basic] left off, providing programming functions developers can use rather than having to write those functions from scratch. It *can* add features that would be difficult if not impossible otherwise, though many apps use .NET simply as a shortcut so coders don't have to write as many lines of code. .NET is also large, can take a fair amount of time to install &/or update, & in many cases apps written to take advantage of .NET are not as efficient as they might be otherwise... it's logical to think that developers/coders using .NET only as a shortcut are going to be less concerned about efficiency anyway. Generally speaking, while there are specific complaints about .NET, that stuff's at the root of many not liking it.

I think most users though are simply pragmatic -- the more there is, the more there is to go wrong; in a nod to Apple & *nix, apps without registry entries, .NET etc. can't break your system the same ways as those that do use that stuff. Given 2 apps that *do the very same things with the same speed & quality*, if one's portable & the other's not, people will usually choose the portable version for that reason. When OTOH the app they judge best for the job uses .NET, oh well... if ya gotta, ya gotta.

* * *

#33: "If you already have the full version of Adobe Acrobat, you’re not looking for a freebie such as this."

Wellll... lots of people go on to buy one or more licenses of apps that appear on GOTD, &/or influence others to buy -- it wouldn't make sense for many (most?) developers to put their work on GOTD otherwise. Yes, apps on GOTD are free, & there's nothing at all wrong with grabbing thm solely for that reason, but many folks are looking for software that's better than what they're already using.

BTW, the company is in Stuttgart, which is in Germany, not Holland or Belgium. "Deutsch" is what they speak in Germany. What we call "Dutch" is what they call Nederlandisch in the Netherlands. It's halfway between English and German.

As for their software, I'd rather use LibreOffice (with the PDF editor plugin), sorry.

Tot ziens

Is there a good reason it cannot be installed on XP SP2?

I installed PDF Composer on Windows XP SP3. My experiences with it weren't happy at all.

The registration process hung for five minutes with the message "Requesting license...". As there was no Cancel option or any other way to exit the program, I was forced to shut down the program with Windows Task Manager. Despite this, the program reported that it had been registered when I next ran it.

Much worse, PDF Composer did not save anything to disk.

I made several attempts to compose and save a PDF. Although I clicked on both the Save and Save All buttons and I also replied 'Yes' to the question "Do you want to save before closing?" I received no response, and nothing was saved to my target folder. I tried again with a different target folder. Again, nothing was saved.

I made two attempts to split a PDF file. I found it strange that the Splitter interface requested no information about how the file should be split although it provides an elaborate interface for specifying the format of target filenames. Apparently it is designed to split multi-page files into single pages only, something I wouldn't normally want to do. In any case, after pressing Split Files and instantly receiving the message "Splitting done", nothing was saved to my target folder. I also found that all subsequent attempts to change the target folder had no effect at all.

Complete failure to save, without any error messages, is a problem I haven't seen with any other program I've installed to date. And aside from this, I found its non-standard interface badly thought out, incredibly ugly and awkward to use.

Needless to say, I uninstalled this program.

@Larry, Germans will tell you they live in Dutchland (Germany in English).
In the Netherlands they speak Hollandish. In Suriname they speak Sranan tongo, obvious you meant South Africa and Namibia.

Good app and functions(nice interface too), but MS .NET Framework 4.0 is difficult for my dualboot system.
Is there any old version of Microsoft.NET Framework 4.0 that does not require Windows XP SP3 (but XP SP2)?

This program is kind of misleading. When I think of Composer I think of being able to create pdf files from scratch. This does not have the option for that but to merge and split. Should rename to something more suitable other than Composer. Should be PDF splitter or something like that. I wouldn't waste my money with this.

#21: "21.I do not see how anyone who is familiar with the full version of Adobe Acrobat could possible be happy with PDF Composer."

If you already have the full version of Adobe Acrobat, you're not looking for a freebie such as this.

Cant convert from docx to pdf, only support image file :(

Download, install, register, all went OK.

BUT -- SOMETHING IS WRONG!!!

Both in "Composer" and "Merger", when I browse to a folder so that I can select files for collating/merging, the File Open dialog DOES NOT SHOW the .PDF files in my folder!!!

Then how am I supposed to use the software??

As JarJar Binks would say, "HOW WOODE!"

Seems that it can't convert text and document files to PDF, only images. That's too limited for me. (web site here: http://www.pdf-composer.com/Features/

What is wrong with you people? I have been using the different versions of net framework for years and never had any problems. Worse aggravation is that it takes up some hard drive space. There are no boogey men hiding in net.

This may be a silly question - but as to the comments about it requiring .NET - does that mean a full paid for installation of some sort - or is it like Java - that somehow works on my pc without having to have done a major install.

Sorry if that sounds ignorant.
To those discussing PDFill - when I used that to unlock a PDF, it put a watermark on every one of the pages - making the use of that PDF useless - is there a way to turn that off? (free version)
TY

Micke #2
“Netherlandish”: of or relating to Netherlands.

The language spoken in “Netherlands” is Dutch (West Germanic Language) also spoken (as an official language) in Belgium (Europe) and Suriname (Northern South Africa). To be more precise , in the Dutch speaking region of Belgium it is called Flemish (a variety of the Dutch language).

@ 21, HJB, if you can afford a quad core with 6 GB and Win 7 Ultimate, it's obvious you can afford the full Acrobat. I'll have to do with a double core, 2 GB and definitely the weakest libk, Vista (4 reinstalls from scratch in less than 2 1/2 years and starting to "deteriorate" again on this Vista "dedicated PC"). And the likes of poor me are very happy with all the decent freeware availble as well as the free offerings through the likes of GAOTD, My Digital Life, Raymond...

The software switches to English automatically and will install in a blink. Only when you don't have DOT NET 4, you will get the possibility to download and install it as part of the entire installation and will take a little more time.
To clear some of the confusion I noticed the product was made in Dutchland which explains the language in the beginning.

#21, HJB, this isn't that hard to figure out. In the Composer, you open one or more source files and one or more target files (the main window is resizable, and the splitter can be moved). Drag and drop pages from the source file(s) onto the target file(s). The Re-Arranger also supports drag-and-drop of pages. Some things could be improved, like checking for valid drop targets and prompting for saving (works some places but not others).

I don´t like the DOS window as it gives the program a bad taste of old and slow functions. The install and uninstall was very slow indeed, so I think this one is too heavy for the i5 in my G73Jh.

The program itself is not the first one that I would use money on, coz there is many other programs there is doing a much better work. They even offer you to make the PDF from scratch.

The program installed in VISTA/HOME without difficulties. It filled in the registration field and registered online with one click. I've explored it and believe that it will be useful for some occasional tasks. Thank you Impressions Future Media and GOTD.

I do not see how anyone who is familiar with the full version of Adobe Acrobat could possible be happy with PDF Composer.

1. Does not appear to have a manual or a help file;
2. Not intuitive;
3. Does not appear to convert text and Word files, only appears to convert graphic files.
4. Claims to have drag and drop, but not as far as I can see.
5. Appears to depart from claims at many points.
I am using System 7 ultimate on a quad core pc with 6gig memory.

HJB