It sounds like a very useful program

I tried to register about 2 1/2 hrs ago but no email has arrived in any of my mail boxes including Junk, in spite of the message from their website saying the email was on it's way.

An hour ago I even re-registered which assured me the same .... but no 1st or 2nd email has arrived, yet. Only 1 hr to go.

I do get an unsolicited advert to Upgrade to the paid version. . . . a bit of an insult really

This is the first time I comment on any software, this PDF Converter from Wondershare is wonderful it has converted a 36 page PDF file very quickly and near to perfection. Thanks GAOTD for providing this program.

I must thank Mr. Ashraf, and Mr. Mike for giving us your feedback on these programs. It has become my habit to go through all the comments specially from Ashraf and Mr. Mike before installing any program, hats off to you guys and I wish you both best of health.

I had a need to convert a 26-page PDF newsletter with 4 images and fairly simple formatting (only two different type faces and only a couple of different sizes) into a Word file. Wondershare PDF Converter Pro did a quick job and produced a nice looking file. BUT many words had extraneous spaces in them - dozens if not hundreds. I had several dozen shortened URLs that had a forward slash followed by a short alphanumeric sequence.In 131 cases, Wondershare PDF Converter Pro stuck a space in front of the slash. I know the number because I did a find an replace to fix them.

So all in all, not very good results for serious work.

This software is the first of all that I have tried to accurately convert a pdf file. The first file to try was a 28 page document that had several various forms in it and different formats incorporated.
First, the instalation on a windows 7 64 bit Laptop and desktop was fast and error free.
The program converted the documents to .docx in less than a minute ( but might be faster or slower depending on the proceeor speed you have as well as the system). All of the text allowed any changes you might need or want via the software ability of Word. The best part was the fact that the forms and other format came through the conversion accurately and it even modified the format within word to accomodate. Each form would allow the entry of data as needed and function just as if I had created it.
Thank you Wondershare for the quality of your work. This is not only valuable to me, but is a must buy for the office.

A bit expensive for not having OCR.
311 page book took 78 seconds on an 8core FX with 32GB ram.
PDF - ePub.

Not as fast the last giveaway PDF program; Aiseesoft PDF to Word Converter. And that one even does OCR.

Something very wrong to extract a document from a PDF file and take /that/ long. Adobe Acrobat does a dump in less than 15 seconds going to HTML; Calibre x64 goes to ePub in just shy of 30sec.

Developers need to reconsider the coding and try to figure out what they did wrong.

two computers, two different stories: one installed 4.01 on top of 3.0.0 with no problem whatsoever, but the other one restarted the computer at the end of installation instead of starting Wondershare PDF Converter. It also left the old version despite changing the folder of the new one to match the old one, but worst of all it refused to start at all and so I had to uninstall both versions and start all over again. Fortunately, the second time worked just as smoothly as the first time on the first computer. I don't know why, but it would seem that there must have been some sort of bug that caused the problem the first time around on the second computer. Just thought I'd let you know in case anyone else happens to have this same problem.

Program crashed.
Uninstalled.
My pc is XP Pro. SP3
Not a lucky day for me.

This is not one of Wondershare's best . Very buggy. Better alternatives out there. I usually am happy letting the format stay what it was created as.


" Ashraf will never write any other review for us here.

Thanks Fubar!! "

Wow, IF that is the case, Thanks a lot fubar. I can't thank you enough foe ridding us of him.

Cannot open the program because of an access violation. Uninstalled.

I did the download. Tried the EPUB. Not bad except all it does it create the left hand side of the page ...no two page views. All that can be changed in the epub is the size of the type. Next I tried the HTML output. I got the TOC but none were clickable and I could not access the rest of the book. So I think you need to work on this product actually performing to spec before charging anything. Finally I picked just the first 50 pages of my ebook out of 435 to the DOC format. All I got was asked to save it again and again...obviously this is going to be uninstalled.

Thanks though and a Happy Christmas to you.

Thanks for the thorough review MikeR. That's great that no nagware/malware exists (like many freebies try to include these days), but why would a PDF Converter need to run at start-up ??

That's great that you use Winpatrol - I do also, but not everyone uses Winpatrol. The fact that Wondershare PDF Converter runs at start-up makes you question what the software developer is trying to achieve by doing this (Trying to push a forced/automatic upgrade maybe, which will then require payment?). I'll pass, thanks.

Dear GOTD users:

While it’s true that the voting appears lopsided, and some may be posting for personal gain, the software here is free (some standard, some pro, and some teasers) and nobody is forcing anyone to read the comments or even download the software. The personal attacks that occasionally occur are not necessary and I believe more would be gained by having as many contribute here as possible. I would hope that the supporters here will not follow anyone’s advice blindly, but carefully weigh their options before downloading on this site or taking advantage of the free software suggested.

Although I may not personally agree with every contributor/tester using this forum, I keeping coming back to this site daily. While I pride myself as somewhat knowledgeable in this field, I have learned a lot from reading the views expressed here and the free software available. I myself have been on this site long enough to know who the experts are as well as those who are “copy and paste” contributors. There is a lot of good information on the web as well as misinformation, and this forum is no different. I hope this site continues and people continue their comments, minus the negativity.

I installed this program mostly to test its EPUB conversion abilities for use with my Nook ereader. It works so-so for the simplest PDF files, the Nook doesn't recognize the complex files this program converted. Yes, I know the Nook can read PDF files, but I am looking for a program that can create Nook compatible EPUB files. This program gives not very usable results for EPUB conversions, so the search continues on.

Uninstalled the program, again only because it doesn't suit my specific needs.

Does not work in Kobo with Russian. Tried with two different PDFs, both of them are readable in Kobo.

Disappointed to find that the install software wouldn't install on my Win7 Desktop so couldn't use it.

Hello Giovanni Santa Claus 2 the revenge,
Thank you very much for all your advice very valuable to me
because I can no longer validate a software offered by giveaway of the day since the introduction of the new procedure. I get the following message "failed lauch etc.") reported problem but no response so far, no solution.
thank you again
cordially

#23, trainerdave: "Anybody know of a free pdf -> ppt converter?"

Try Boxoft Free PDF to PPT (freeware): http://www.boxoft.com/pdf-to-ppt/

I haven't used it; they have other free PDF to xxxx converters as well.

Since PDF files are considered such a standard these days, what is the benefit on performing a conversion on them?

I also downloaded and tried the Pro version.
It is very interesting that its conversion quality is far worse than that of today's Giveaway! And today's program is really good! Why the big difference?

People like FUBAR make this forum destructive....and now, thanks to comments like his, Ashraf will never write any other review for us here.

Thanks Fubar!!

I tried the converter but it does not seem to save the converted file. Must be missing a step somewhere. Any suggestions?

Am I the only one who is frustrated that the registration page offers a $14.99 one time deal to purchase a full license, but find the linked page has a price of $19.99?

FWIW, I love this software, and get frustrated when lapses like this occur.

Tx, GOTD and Wondershare, either way

A fantastic product, highly recommended!

GOATD user review:

The software downloaded and installed without fuss or hidden nagware / malware and the registration code arrived well-nigh instantly. At installation, the ever dependable WinPatrol flagged up that the program, or aspect of it (probably the updater), wished to run every time this computer is booted up; I simply told WinPatrol not to allow that. Job done.

Test 1: The first test was of a 16-page A4-size mixed portrait / landscape PDF file consisting of text and images. No text was embedded in any image.

Result: The software performed better than earlier efforts by Wondershare and considerably better than many rivals. Although it converts only to Word docx -- which I don't have, there not being the slightest reason to upgrade from my 12-year-old Office 2000 -- it was a simple matter to take the Wondershare read-only output file and save it as a .doc. Any poster here complaining about the docx conversion ought to try 'Save As' first.

The converted file was almost, though not quite, a mirror image of the original Word document source file, used in this test for comparison purposes. There were no problems with line breaks, clarity, accuracy or text / image positioning.

Yes, the conversion did mismatch the original font -- a commonplace weakness in this kind of program -- by generating output text in Segoe UI. But it was a simple task to alter that back to the original's Calibri font.

Note: if your Word program is set up to show inter-word spaces, then this program will, like many another, misrepresent Microsoft's formatting mark as a small circle. The circle is a visual effect only, not a text imprint. If it bothers you, just uncheck the 'spaces' option in Word/Tools/Options in Word 2000 or wherever it might be in later versions.)

The original Word source document was unusual for the way it mixed portrait A4 with landscape A4, and thus challenged this software's ability to contend with page orientation. The output file, however, managed the portrait/landscape mix with complete accuracy, and it was only when it was then re-converted back to .pdf using the excellent Bullzip freeware:

http://www.bullzip.com/

that a glitch occurred. Bullzip rendered every page in portrait, not landscape, so that the original landscape pages appeared with all the images but none of the text: just white space.

It should be noted that this isn't necessarily a fault of the Wondershare program but, as said, of a mismatch. A different pdf printer may have coped better, and an actual hard copy print-out -- which I didn't attempt -- may well have emerged exactly as it should. But this is a minor quibble: if one is seriously going about the business of editing a pdf, then actual editing software -- not conversion software alone -- is always going to be required.

Verdict: Wondershare did extremely well in this test. Not many people actually vary the page orientation within the same Word document -- I have friends who even now still can't figure out how this simple job is done in Word's Page Setup -- and so the conversion here, the Bullzip/Wondershare mismatch notwithstanding, was very good indeed.

Test 2. One of the more common problems with most pdf conversion software is that of the text / image ratio: there's a point at which things go disastrously wrong because there are, in essence, too many images on a page and too much scattered text.

Not unexpectedly then, a 16-page A4 pdf with two or three images of different sizes per page, complete with interspersed text in varying fonts and sizes, was converted by Wondershare into a 16-page docx file. . . with no text whatsoever.

This has happened with earlier versions of this software but is by no means a failure exclusive to Wondershare. However: the phenomenon is not necessarily consistent and in any event is related to the construction and setting of the original Word doc from which the pdf has been made.

Verdict: too great a mix of, and variation in, images and text in a Word-based pdf file seems likely to defeat this software.

Test 3: For this test, a tourist brochure which I know to be complex of design was downloaded in pdf guise from the Net:

http://www.visitgrandjunction.com/guide-order

This is a beautifully designed document and represents a significant challenge to any pdf conversion software.

Verdict: Outstanding. The Wondershare software produced an output file which 99% faithfully represented the complex graphics and text settings of the origional .pdf. It failed -- predictably -- to handle some, though by no means all, of the instances where designer-style text was embedded in a scrolled graphic, and it also couldn't quite catch up with one of the maps.

In all other aspects, however, the conversion was stunningly good and one of the best I've ever seen of a downloaded brochure of this complex nature.

Verdict overall: Today's software is well worth downloading and trying for its PDF to Word abilities. The performance failures mentioned above aren't deal-killers (not that there's any deal to kill here anyway: free is as good as it gets.) I usually worry about re-installation costs but to be honest, it'll take a major breakthrough for today's program to be able to significantly improve in the areas mentioned, so worrying about updates seems pointless.

The program itself is minimalistic and no, I haven't tried the Excel, Powerpoint, HTML and ePub conversion settings because they're of no relevance to my particular needs; others can as easily test those aspects of the software and place a review here as I've done of the PDF to Word facility.

Thanks, GAOTD, and congratulations to Wondershare: compared to earlier outings of its pdf conversion software, this seems to be the best yet in PDF to Word processing.

Fubar,

A lot of people would like to see you back here. I myself always read your input on items. Your knowledge is way beyond most, including me. Think about reviewing the giveaways. A lot look forward to it.

There is no OCR built in this software, so all of the conversions are approximate characters without true editing capabilities after the conversion. Lots of pictures are just either ignored or put in a new not editable frames.
Uninstalled.

I got the earlier version from GAOTD and found it useful. When I migrated to a new computer the old version stopped working, so I grabbed this one. I uninstalled the old version first, and the new version installed smoothly.

Can anyone advise if it installs the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x86 redistributable even if you already have the Visual C++ 2010 x86 redistributable installed by Microsoft? These redistributables usually get installed as part of Windows updates. Some programs will install the redistributable again under their own name(ie, under the publisher name of Wondershare, rather than Microsoft, which is unnecessary and messy). Anyone?

Any tests done with ePub conversions ?? Their previous version did a very average job with ePub conversions. Any improvements?

NOT WonderShare's BEST SOFTWARE

I bought the PRO version of PDF Converter (prior to this GAOTD). It is a big disappointment...even with the OCR plug-in included with the Pro version.

Unless you are converting just a pure text PDF with an uniform font style and size AND WITHOUT images, the output is a jumbled mess that requires extensive reformating and editing in Word. Again, that occurs in the PRO version which has the OCR plug-in included, which today's version does not. So, I can just imagine how well the Standard version converts WITHOUT assistance from OCR technology.

I suppose it is still faster than simply retyping a whole PDF from scratch...that is, if you cut and paste the text from Wondershare's docx conversion into a blank Word document and then use Word's 'clear formating' feature to end up with clean text that can be formated to whatever style you want.

I consider the Pro version to have been a waste of my money. And even if I didn't have the Pro version, I doubt I would accept today's Standard version. Why crowd one's registry with more so-so software?

Very good tool today with a clean and intuitive GUI and the "drag & drop" method to import your Pdf files.

Big PROS: Can convert a PDf to Word/ Excel/ PPT/ EPUB/ HTML/Text /Images in one unique solution (usually you need different tools to perform such a conversion)

Big CONS: I was not able to convert images and tables of a PDF file of mine to the DOC format: did I miss something?

Overall I give it a THUMBS UP!!

BEST FREEWARE ALTERNATIVES

* PDFCore
Preview PDF files and change metadata like title, author, subject, etc.;
Convert PDF to Image or Convert Image to PDF;
Convert PDF to TXT or Convert PDF to Word;
Merge PDF or Split PDF;
Scan Paper Documents to PDF;
PDF OCR to Extract Text;
Remove Password;

http://www.pdfcore.com/

* PdfMate Converter
It turns PDF files into WORD, ePUB, TXT, JPG, HTML and even SWF flash video. But it can also modify some PDF properties.

http://www.pdfmate.com

* UniPDF Converter
Converts PDF to Word, Images, HTML, or Text in batches

http://unipdf.com

* pfPdfConverter
Converts PDF files into simple text, image files and HTML
http://www.pklab.net/index.php?title=pkPdfConverter&id=363&lang=EN

PDF ==> WORD
http://www.hellopdf.com/index.php
http://www.pdfwordconverter.net/pdf-to-word-converter-features.html

PDF ==> EXCEL


Personally I prefer a tool which can convert an EPUB, MOBI, TXT, HTM and RTF file to PDF documents (for FREE of course...LOL!): how about you dudes??

http://www.weenysoft.com/free-epub-to-pdf-converter.html

And I also find more useful a FREE tool which allows me to convert my (excel) spreadsheets to PDF files, preserving my hyperlinks as well, rather than the opposite, with the additional ability to embed a creative commons license in my final PDF file output: too good to be true? Of course NOT:

http://www.cogniview.com/free-excel-to-pdf-converter

Enjoy!!

Regrettably, the converted file is NOT editable by Word. Not certain of the usefulness here.

I have the previous version of this program, and I found it very useful on the rare occasions when I need to convert pdf to another format. All of the pdf converters are problematic and produce erratic results in my experience, but Wondershare PDF Converter does the best job on average for me, so I usually try it first.

Last time I have downloaded this and used this. This damn thing corrupted my MS office. I still have problems because of that. Avoid this.

Tried to convert an Internet Archive book - total fail. Not really useful for my purposes.

Yet another PDF converter that makes every line into a separate paragraph. So, yes, technically, it is a Word document. But forget about trying to edit that document anything more than fixing typos.

A rare disappointment from Wondershare. Why? True text within the original pdf is merely rasterized and placed on new doc or ppt as an un-editable - and slightly blurred - image of that text. that's NOT a useable conversion.

Free UniPDF does it right for Word (.doc) output, Iwas hoping this Wondershare would do the same for slides output (.ppt). Alas, NO.

Anybody know of a free pdf -> ppt converter?
thanks!

Would like to try the product but although I received my registration code, when I copy and paste it and then try and register it states "invalid licensed e-mail or registration code". Both correct so this is useless to me.

Hi., Be careful, if you have the older version installed. The installation folder previously was C:\Program Files\Wondershare\PDFConverter
This version installed in C:\Program Files\Wondershare\PDF Converter

( one more space after word PDF )

So not to the same folder! If you are careless you will keep the older version too!
Have a nice day
Jozsef

review #2 states program is LESS accurate than online converters, then says, quote, This is a keeper, exclamation mark. ??

#13, Mister Lee, the person that you're thinking of is mike, not Mike, and he doesn't post here any longer. I rarely post here, there's not much point. GOTD doesn't care about the very heavy vote manipulation or people pushing freeware, they only care about number of visitors. It's not mike, but Ashraf who drives GOTD traffic to his own site for the sole purpose of generating revenue. I disagreed with mike about a lot of things, but not that.

I like Wondershare products but after trying this version I found many problems. Breaks up too many words or joins others together. Tried to epub and to html and both had many mistakes. In my humble opinion this is not very accurate.

Some time ago, I paid for their PRO version of this because I think it is one of the better converters on the market. However, as I've mentioned before, I sent them a scanned document that Wondershare could not convert.

Their response was this, "I have forwarded your pdf file to our programers for further check. Due to the complex layout of your pdf file, our product cannot recognize the characters in it. We will keep optimizing our product to be better and better."

Hello Mike, (Comment #2)... I was happy to see your comment this morning. I have been in the habit of scanning through the comments daily to see your comments on the software being offered for that day. However, after being a prolific commenter here for such a long time, for the last several months you haven't had much to say. In recent times your posts have been infrequent and much shorter—still helpful, but not nearly as detailed as had been the norm for you. I can say that you had been as much of an asset to this site as the venerable, long-time poster Ashraf had been in days of old. Yes, I know Ashraf has been commenting here again recently, (actually it's been his protege Justin), but it's still not quite the same.

Truth be known, I'm concerned about you Mike. Of course I don't know you personally, just through this site, but in a strange kind of way I feel like I do know you. Quite sometime ago, I recall an exchange between you and Fubar, where he had unjustly criticized you for self promotion. However, you pointed out that you had never linked anything in any of your posts to any other web page that could have benefited you. Also, it was mentioned that you had some kind of unspecified disability. (In Fubar's defense, he did apologize). That revelation about you having some kind of disability is what has haunted and bothered me ever since it became apparent to me that you were posting only very sporadically and then only briefly. Long time visitors to this site, certainly remember your very in depth, helpful posts. Also, you would come back later and address 'one by one' all the questions and problems others were having. And I would like to add, you always did it in a very polite, non condescending way. It is very obvious that your knowledge of tech related information is immense and you were always willing to take the time to share it with others. I for one, am very grateful for all that I learned from your comments. I hope and pray that you are in good health Mike.

Mister Lee

@4 No, you're not missing anything, a text option is not available in the Wondershare PDF Converter, but it certainly is in PDFZilla as is convert to Word doc files.

At least this PDF Converter does work, and does so fast and accurately unlike Ai###soft's PDF2Word converter.

Just an FYI, the downloaded zip file from GOTD here is named:
WondersharePDFCreator.zip

Is that just a typo - 'creator' rather than the "converter" product which this GOTD page is describing. (Since, you know, creating a pdf is not the same thing as converting a pdf into something else).
Just asking.

Weren't there like two PDF converters given away here just last week? Do people really convert those things that much? I've had a personal computer since 1990, and I haven't ever had to convert a PDF into another file. Not one time.

It works with plain English pdf file, but not Chinese pdf file, it can not covert into editable document.

Very good software. Nice Quality, Quick conversion, Easy to use interface.

The registration code was astoundingly received back almost instantly.
Negative remarks: It installs Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x86 Redistributable without asking for permission. It also cannot do OCR, so cannot do a scanned PDF - this needs the Pro version.
Tried it on one complicated PDF and the result was excellent, so thumbs up.

I had a problem to register. The GetKeyCode leads me to the page with e-mail and name. But then to nowhere (405 Not Allowed
WonderWeb/100.99.999)