PDF Problems: Solved

PDFs can be a real pain. Part of the problem is the flipside of the solution. PDFs protect documents; they preserve the format and the content so that people can read them (and print them) without changing them.

Nice of you're the author and you want to keep some control over your work. You can be pretty sure that your document will always look like it did when you put it out into the ether. No pictures popping down to the next page and no additional commentary slipped into the text unnoticed.

But what if you're the reader, or user of the document. Maybe you want to lift something out of it and use it in your own document. (That's not necessarily evil -- it could be data from a government report, or something else that's in the public domain). Or you might want to cut out some paragraphs so printing it doesn't use up so much paper. You might even want to combine a few PDFs so you have all of the information in one place.

Adobe Reader
Or forget about all that stuff, what if you just want to read a PDF quickly. Adobe Reader is more than 20 megabytes just to download. (Plus, Adobe tries to slip in its Album Starter Edition for another 7 megabytes).

That's a big program. It takes up a lot of space on your hard drive, then it takes time to load -- and that's even if you leave a little bit of it in memory for "quick starting" it.

Sumatra PDF (Free, Open Source)
Sumatra is slick. It's simple, small, super-fast and open source. It takes up just 895 KB on your hard drive.

What can it do? I'll print the entire manual:

• open PDF files via menu
• open PDF files via drag & drop
• page up and 'p' for going to previous page
• page down and 'n' for going to next page
• 'q' to quit
• set different zoom levels via menu

Of course that's not a lot of functionality, but you'll appreciate it the first time you click on a PDF link in your browser and the file flies open in half a second.

I made it my default PDF reader (it asks the first time you fire it up). That way I can check out a PDF document quickly. Most of the time that's all I need to do. If I need to do more, I have a program for that too.

PDF-Reader (Free)
This is a step up from Sumatra. It's a little bigger (2MB), and it does a little more. You can cut and copy from PDF documents, move words around, move images and add things. Here's the catch: you can make all of those changes, but you can't save the result. You can print it, though and that's handy.

If you want to save your work, you have to upgrade to PDF-Editor. It's $80 bucks and probably worth it. I don't use it. If there's something specific you want to do with pdfs and you don't want to fork over the full $80, the company has a whole line of PDF software that does various things for less money. It's all affordable and you can try it before you buy it. (Incidentally, the company, CAD-KAS Software, has a whole line of interesting-looking programs, mostly in the $10 - $20 range).

So why don't I upgrade to PDF-Editor? Two reasons. First, PDF-Editor had a few hiccups right after I installed it. It seems to be OK now, but I want to use it for a while before I consider upgrading.

ABBYY PDF Transformer ($100)
The other reason is that I already own ABBYY PDF Transformer. The main thing I need to do with PDFs is convert them to text. Formatted text -- because I'm usually working with tables of data that I want to put into a spreadsheet. PDF Transformer does that really well.

Creating PDF Files
By the way, if you just want to create PDF files, that's easy and free. Some software (like Microsoft Office and Open Office) hve plug ins that let you print to PDF. You can also get little programs that show up like printers in all of your software and let you "print" your work into PDF. Instead of coming out of your printer on paper, they turn into a PDF document on your computer.

Cute PDF (Free)
You just install this freeware and the open-source Ghostscript converter and any program that prints will print to PDF. It's nice because it doesn't harass you about upgrading or hit you with advertising. It just does what it's supposed to do. You can upgrade though.

For traditionalists

Adobe Reader (Free)
This is the PDF reader nearly everybody uses. It works, it lets you do a few things with PDF documents (read them, print them, copy text (awkwardly and without the formatting), and copy images). But it's big and slow.

Adobe Acrobat ($300 and up)
This is the program that probably created the PDFs you read. It lets you create, combine, edit, and annotate PDFs. You can also convert a PDF to a text document (e.g. Word) with the formatting intact.

Packing Your Bags

Sometimes you want to move a program from one hard drive to another, like from your C: drive to your D: drive. Why? I dunno, could be a lot of reasons.

Maybe your C: drive was getting full, so you added a new drive to your computer. Maybe your old drive is showing signs of age and you want to get the important stuff off it before something bad happens (kind of like moving to that new Earth-like planet before this one's totally used up).

Whatever. The point is that sometimes people want to move a program and they find out it isn't as easy as it might seem.

When you install software (assuming you've done it since DOS) you're not just copying a bunch of files from a CD to your computer; you're integrating the new program with Windows and all of the other programs on your computer. It's actually a pretty complicated process that involves a lot of different connections between the new software and your system.

If you decide to move the program, you've got to change all of those connections too. You have to, so to speak, pack your bags. (Sorry, just making sure the title of the post makes sense).

(Oh, this is important. I said move a program from "one hard drive to another." I mean "one hard drive to another on the same computer." If you want to move software from one computer to another, you pretty much need the original installation files. And, legally speaking, you should probably be moving the software, not copying it. Unless your license covers more than one installation. In any case, the process I'm talking about here won't move anything to a different computer, just a new location on the same computer.)

So what's the process? It starts with good news: it's easy, it's relatively safe and, thanks to the fine folks at PC Magazine, it's free.

Step one: get the program. It's called COA2, for Change of Address 2. Yes, it's the second version -- it works with Windows XP. The full writeup and download link at PC Magazine is here.

The actual download is on this page. If you're just looking for the download, it's in tiny print just under the headline. It looks like this: Download Now: coa2.zip

The How To part starts here. It's well worth reading. At least the first two pages. They explain how to use the program without hurting your computer. After that it goes into tips for customizing COA2 and, eventually, a detailed explanation of how the software works.