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Zilla PDF to TXT Converter Giveaway
$19.95
EXPIRED

Giveaway of the day — Zilla PDF to TXT Converter

Zilla PDF to TXT Converter converts pdf files to plain text format files in batch mode.
$19.95 EXPIRED
User rating: 81 28 comments

Zilla PDF to TXT Converter was available as a giveaway on February 18, 2010!

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$49.95
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Zilla PDF to TXT Converter is a Windows application to convert pdf files to plain text format files in batch mode. Zilla PDF to TXT Converter also support convert specific pages range to txt files.

System Requirements:

Windows 2000, XP, and Vista

Publisher:

PDFZilla.com

Homepage:

http://www.pdfzilla.com/zilla_pdf_to_txt_converter.html

File Size:

1.87 MB

Price:

$19.95

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Developed by ES-Computing
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Developed by Head Document Tool Software, Inc.

Comments on Zilla PDF to TXT Converter

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#28

I decided to grab it at the last minute, and it converted the first .pdf document I could find (a 62K .pdf of the bill that required all of us in the US to buy new TV equipment by last June :() in seconds and afaict from a quick scan, accurately wrt content and line/paragraph separation.

Reply   |   Comment by Ronn Blankenship  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#27

@#10, #13: Adobe Reader V9.3 certainly DOES save a 'text-based' PDF as text … but the result is not very pretty. The 'Some PDF' converter mentioned previously saves the text in a much more readable way, AND allows you to select the pages you want to convert (unlike Adobe Reader, which forces you to convert the entire PDF).

In fairness, today's GOTD also allows you to choose the start and end page of the original PDF document, but it seems from the other comments that results (and even installation) can vary depending on your PC and the kinds of PDFs you want to convert.

Reply   |   Comment by Cad Delworth CEng MBCS CITP  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#26

@ # 17
To convert scanned image, you need ocr software.
Your pdf has no text, its an image, ocr will scan and "guess" at letters to create text.
There is a free one (called, I think FreeOcr) but I don't have links handy.I do not know how good it is, as I didn't use it, I have a promo from Abbyy:)

Reply   |   Comment by Toris  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#25

Not a true OCR program. Your PDF file MUST be in plain text to begin with. That means if the source was a JPEG, SWF, PNG, or any other non-text file, you will get blank pages.

Crashes on PDF/A and PDF/H files, even in plain text source.

Reply   |   Comment by lostinlodos  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)
#24

Take this comparison for what it's worth, because I only ran one document into PDFZilla, not today's Zilla PDF to TXT Converter.

Source: a Teach12 document portion, scanned into PDF, then OCR'd using Adobe Acrobat Standard 8.1, at best quality. (Why did I want text? For PDA reading--my very old PDA doesn't do PDFs well, and I was too low on space to use a Word conversion [Docs2Go].)

Comparison was
1) screen-scrape the PDF, paste into Word 2007, Save as .txt, as others have mentioned as an alternative.
vs.
2) PDFZilla, output to text.

Results: I'll stick with #1, copy-paste into Word, because PDFZilla was trying to be too intelligent in line-spacing an outline, and failed. See the samples for yourself.

1) Sample captured by screen scrape, then Word to text. More faithful to the original outline, though only single line spacing:

"A. Economists take tradebffs seriously. Most people feel that if
something is a good idea overall, admitting any downside is
strategically bad.
1. If you confess that there are tradeoffs, perhaps your
argument will appear weaker.
2. But what may be good strategy in an argument is bad
strategy for a serious analyst, who needs to admit and
consider all the consequences, good and bad.
B. Economists believe in "statistical people," not real people.
1. Anecdotes tell us about one person or situation, but even
when they are completely accurate, they can't reveal
whether that particular example is typical or a rare
exception.
2. Economics requires that decisions about social policy
need to be made on the basis of overall judgements about
effects across society, not individual cases.
C. Selfishness can be an effective principle of social
organization.
1. It may seem implausible that good can ever come of
selfishness. But one of the fundamental insights of
economics, dating back to Adam Smith in 1776 and even ._
earlier, is that people often engage in productive economic
behavior (working, saving, comparison shopping,
providing high quality goods) out of selfish motives.
2. An "invisible hand" can lead selfishness to be socially
productive."

--------------------------

Sample #2, PDFZilla to TXT:

"A. Economists take tradebffs seriously. Most people feel that if something is a good idea overall, admitting any downside is strategically bad. 1. 2.
If you confess that there are tradeoffs, perhaps your argument will appear weaker. But what may be good strategy in an argument is bad strategy for a serious analyst, who needs to admit and consider all the consequences, good and bad.

B.

Economists believe in "statistical people," not real people. 1. Anecdotes tell us about one person or situation, but even when they are completely accurate, they can't reveal whether that particular example is typical or a rare exception. 2. Economics requires that decisions about social policy need to be made on the basis of overall judgements about effects across society, not individual cases. Selfishness can be an effective principle of social organization. 1. It may seem implausible that good can ever come of selfishness. But one of the fundamental insights of economics, dating back to Adam Smith in 1776 and even ._ earlier, is that people often engage in productive economic behavior (working, saving, comparison shopping, providing high quality goods) out of selfish motives. 2. An "invisible hand" can lead selfishness to be socially productive.

C."

Reply   |   Comment by Joe T.  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#23

Hi,

I was installing this on Windows 7 and it doesn't work. Entering the registration key says that it registers at but upon reopening, it asks for the registration again.

It also tried to install itself in C:\, so it felt like the installer wasn't used to Windows 7.

Rev Paul

Reply   |   Comment by Rev Paul  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-3)
#22

I prefer freebies like "Some PDF to Word Converter" or "Free PDF to Word Doc Converter" (beware, the free version asks you a math question each time you convert a file). Both of these allow you convert a PDF and capture both the graphics and the formatted text. And they do a relatively decent job of maintaining embedded font types/sizes/weights, etc. They also allow for some rudimentary control of carriage returns, kerning, page selection, etc. And once your file is converted to Word you can do a "save to text" from there, if you need.

Reply   |   Comment by JohnnieWalker  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+7)
#21

This software is mainly for batch conversion I think...

Reply   |   Comment by YiKeDaCaoMei  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-8)
#20

#16, i can't believe that you don't know those shortcuts. I like your reviews but have shocked after reading your message. i hope you're just kidding.

i've tried today's program and it's working no problem on Vista 64. But i've uninstalled as i find it less useful.

Reply   |   Comment by mond  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-15)
#19

For those who want a whole suite of PDF conversion tools, for FREE, go to

http://www.somepdf.com/

They have PDF-to-
* Text
* HTML
* Word
* Image (extraction)

Reply   |   Comment by Richard  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+17)
#18

I haven't been able to get OpenOffice Draw to work yet--trying the various character code options--but for a few years I've used the command line pdftotext.exe, part of the great xPDF suite of command line tools. (http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html)

While the GUI is nice, for these brute force tasks, I often prefer the down-in-the-dirt tools that are nothing to look at but do the work. For example, pdftotext made short work of a couple pdf files that I couldn't do in OpenOffice, and which came out not complete in Zilla PDF to TXT Converter.

Reply   |   Comment by Cornflower  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+5)
#17

Hello,

A lot -if not too much- has been said about PDF-to-whatever conversion software.

Some observations:

- PDF in itself has so many features (amongst which protection is not the least) that any "easy" conversion software is doomed NOT to do what developers claim it does

- hence: most 'light' conversion programs really don't deserve the attention they get because of their numerous malfunctions/disfunctionality (and therefore are not worth spending any money on)

- as with all program reviews: read more than one (preferably and, if at all available, from independant sources -developers are by definition not independant, but that does not imply that they are crooks) before wasting hours and hours testing. BTW, Ashraf mostly does an excellent job at reviewing and testing. Nobody is perfect and by 'mostly' I mean a 95%+ 'success rate’ ;-)

- it is virtually impossible to evaluate all existing “PDF-to” converters, so it seems paramount to really know what you want or need before actually purchasing something -and that is more difficult than most people think it is. Trust me, most people don't knów what they want, they have some vague idea and that's what they base their decisions on –I’ve made the same mistake all too often myself :(

- my experieces with “PDF-to” converters have been mostly disappointing

- ABOUT THIS PROGRAM: I wouldn't (and won't) bother looking at it just because of it's text only limitation...

- many people claim that Open Office (freeware package under GNU conditions -if I am not mistaken) incorporates (in some or other of its component, be it Write or Draw) most of the combined functionalities various PDF-converters (claim to or seem to) offer.
I haven't had time yet to install OO's latest version (shame on me!) and check these claims. Based on past experience with earlier OO versions however, I'm inclined to believe those users. A thorough review of the whole package (and OO Writer or Draw in particular) may well prove them right -but this lies well outside dotTech's or GOTD's mission, OO being freeware anyway... And there must be dozens of usergroups where you can get all the info you desire ;-)

- one final remark... In many cases (but certainly not in all!) a select/copy/paste from a PDF into (e.g.) Word works fine (but certainly not in all 'target' applications!)... if
1) you're willing to spend lots of time editing the resulting text,
2) if you don't mind losing photo's, graphs, tables etc. (unless they're in 'grabable' format -e.g. tables in jpeg may be copyable, tables made in a PDF-editor may come out completely scrambled, tables from Excel-files, etc... will usually not give the desired results).
In most cases you will need several programs to reach a good result. You may even have to chase/google for those tables or illustrations you can't extract from the PDF (works in many cases but, again, may take lots and lots of time). It all depends on what result you need in the end and wether you deem all that work (and frustration) worth it's while.

Sometimes it's more rewarding to create something original based on the ideas expressed in some publication(s) than just converting one given 'product' into another format. I'm in for creativity ànd I use select/copy/paste a lot... to achieve something completely new, to create added value (even to original pictures or sound, by changing context e.g.)
CREATIVITY. THAT IS THE CHALLENGE AND THE KICK!

Perhaps some of us should return to more "primitive" tools than computers to get back in touch with themselves -and others.
But that is a totally different story altogether ;-)

Greetz,
Patrick.

Reply   |   Comment by Patrick  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#16

#10 No reason to install this software..........just copy & paste the text in notepad from PDF with the help of Adobe Reader...then save the text file(Notepad)........
Then whats the need to install it.....huh..

Reply   |   Comment by Sahil  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#15

FWIW, many limitations posted so far are more about text files than Zilla PDF to TXT Converter.

Zilla PDF to TXT Converter does what it does -- ANSI .TXT files do not contain formatting beyond end-of-line/line feed. The average ANSI .txt file most are used to won't/can't contain/display special characters. How it looks can be dependent on the app you used to open it along with that program's settings, e.g. Notepad's word wrap & font settings. Notepad's so basic it can't properly handle all text files from the Mac &/or *nix worlds -- have to use Wordpad.

When it comes to text files vs. pdf, 'bout the only advantage to text files that I can think of, is plain text files are readable by loads & loads of apps, unlike Adobe Acrobat [.pdf]. Text files are searchable without opening each one in something like Notepad, & you can import data stored in text files into most any app that uses/works with text -- you can import text files into Word Processors, Spreadsheets, Password apps, E-Mail software, HTML Editors... the list goes on & on... If you need to import text from several (or dozens of) pdf files something like Zilla PDF to TXT Converter, with it's batch processing might be very cool.

Now pdf like Flash is Adobe owned, & what they've released for others to work with has been released with the sole goal of making it a de facto standard [IOW Adobe hasn't opened up the storehouse containing all their code, but rather given away just enough bits & pieces to make using the format possible]. There are normally differences between Adobe & non-Adobe software & the pdf files they create, & you'll often see differences in converted pdf files, especially if/when non-Adobe software did the conversion. [That's how Adobe keeps selling their Acrobat (& Flash) software despite hefty price tags] If you don't like today's status quo dominated by pdf files (& Flash), help promote & use open alternatives.

In a nutshell, if you have lots of pdf files that you'd like converted to plain text [or think someday you might], give Zilla PDF to TXT Converter a shot -- just be aware that your mileage may vary depending on the pdf files you want to convert, & what created them in the 1st place.

Reply   |   Comment by mike  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+9)
#14

I have a real old picture book I once scanned and have saved as JPG which I then converted to PDF (74 pages). - I was hoping to get the Table of Contents from that PDF into TXT without having to type it all out. All it came up with was a symbol out of the character map several times across a TXT page.

I then tried a digital book I had downloaded (Google scan of a public domain book) and all I got was the text of the Google disclaimer. Absolutely nothing of the scanned pages from the book.

I tried one other digital book and it caught portions of it that would take hours to reformat but why bother even trying that when many pages were missing.

Perhaps I was hoping for too much and I'm sure there are some applications where this will come in handy. It did catch the Google disclaimer quite nicely.

For those suggesting cut and paste from PDF to notepad... Can I send you my files and will you convert them for me? (free of course!)

Reply   |   Comment by prying1  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)
#13

Thanks much to Adrian (#4), TK (#6), Wody (#7) - the "ctrl+A", "ctrl+C", "ctrl+V" process works effectively. A sample PDF file text pasted and displayed very nicely (with only minor formatting issues, that can be easily edited) in Windows notepad. I love learning something new everyday. Thank you very much (again) for sharing this wonderful, valuable tip with us.

Reply   |   Comment by Happy Person  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-7)
#12

Dear Bellingham
You are right, and it´s useful and nice to mention the ability of OO-Suite Draw to edit PDFs...

BUT notice the restrictions, too: Draw is not very comfortable if you want to change a little bit more in a document! It provides (only) object orientated editing.

While todays giveaway is VERY limited, at least you can work with the text as a whole: all re-formating in one...
Even better: Other conversion tools and even free online services deliver sometimes rather good conversions to the .doc format (in reality: .rtf!). And this is much(!!) more comfortable for editing than Draw!
But for above mentioned purposes and for free, Draw is indeed a great tool!

Reply   |   Comment by ws  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+18)
#11

Believe it or not I have always wanted a Pdf to text converter.
Yes I think this ones for me ;-)
I will let you all know how I get on with a review on my website ;-)

Reply   |   Comment by Al  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-23)
#10

Most people don't realize this, hardly known FREE PDF editing treasure which is almost never mentioned in PDF resource reviews, tips, and tricks etc... and even its author doesn't even make much mention of it, that the Draw app in the Sun Microsystem's Free OpenOffice.org Suite has the ability to edit PDF files. I went through install after install and trial after trial of products boasting of abilities worth paying for, and after reading software review after review only to be disapointed in what was being boldly marketed to be able to convert this and that and end up being more frustrating than practical dependable resources.

And after running the DRAW app, and then opening the various PDF files I had, I giddily played around creating custom manuals and maps etc... like I'd only dreamed of before.

After being impressed by that feature, I looked a bit deeper into the OOo applications and plugins/add-ons etc... (like being able to directly edit and save to & from Google Documents, OOo's compatibility with MS Office 07's new doc formats, WYSIWYG HTML editor, the list goes on...) And I realized that I had been overlooking the power, features, and ease of use of what I'd now consider the most practical and powerful free software suite in the world. I would now buy it instead of the price-inflated Office bloatware anyday (only I can't cause it's free).

Reply   |   Comment by Bellingham  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+71)
#9

Adobe reader can save a pdf to text. So what's the raison de etre of this program?

Reply   |   Comment by Amulu  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#8

Faulty!

It did not recognize/convert properly foreign language text, nor it recognized some spacial characters (i.e. trademark, copy right, smilies, arrows, etc.)

Reply   |   Comment by Dr. Olaimi  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+9)
#7

I beg to differ with a number of folks who seem to think that a simple copy&paste operation will transfer the PDF file contents to whatever processing app they chose...WRONG. Fact is, copy and paste & print even, can be secured so you cannot copy the contents of a PDF file.

'nuff said.

Reply   |   Comment by DrLongBear  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+13)
#6

Alternative: Open PDF reader. Hold down CTRL and press A, hold down CTRL and press C. Open notepad, hold down Ctrl and press V, Select file, save as... and save it. All done!

Reply   |   Comment by Wody  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+27)
#5

I would give this one a miss..clearly such software cannot do the conversion without loss of formatting as well as without errors

Reply   |   Comment by Isaac  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#4

To do a PDF to Text conversion, you only need to do a copy and paste.

Reply   |   Comment by Adrian  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+28)
#3

I think for what it is able to do, it's way overpriced.

Reply   |   Comment by Mike  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#2

I rather use PDFZilla and JPG2PDF instead of that... like PDF to text ONLY? WTF!?

~Joji~

Reply   |   Comment by Joji  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-55)
#1

The Good
* Straightforward and easy to use.
* Can convert PDFs in batch.
* Supports drag + drop.
* User can convert whole PDFs or define a specific portion of the PDFs to be converted.
* Supported encrypted PDF conversion.

The Bad
* Can't seem to properly convert PDFs that were created out of text files.
* Doesn't properly carry over spacing between paragraphs/lines.
* Doesn't give the user any sort of "heads up" if the PDF being converted is encrypted or not.
* Doesn't follow normal program "conventions", such as installing into the Program Files folder.
* "Sound Reminder" doesn't work.

Free Alternatives
A-PDF

For final verdict, recommendations, and full review please click here.

Reply   |   Comment by Ashraf  –  14 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+59)
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