deskUNPDF 2.03

Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad       © 2008

Docudesk, LTD. http://www.docudesk.com/deskUNPDF-PDF-Converter-for-mac.shtml Release Date: March 19, 2008 Cost: $69.95 List, $52.50 discounted price [USD]. System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 & 10.5, Universal binary, 160 MB Hard Drive Space; Processor: 1.5 GHz or greater (PowerPC or Intel) And RAM: 512 Mb or greater.

Strengths: Easy to use and relatively error free way to convert PDF files to other formats. A well written heavily illustrated users manual, also accusable as help files.   Weaknesses: The product user interface would be strengthened if one could drop and drag file into it for processing, a claimed functionality I could not get to work.   Previous Reviews: links to previous macCompanion reviews on the same product. Demo Limitation: deskUNPDF operates in trial mode, allowing for single page conversions, until a product activation code is provided. Copyright Notice: Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies. Review was carried out on my iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM running Mac OS X version 10.5.2. Disclaimer: When briefly reviewing share-freeware I will often use the developer’s product, functions and features descriptions. All other comments are strictly my own and based on testing. Why need I rewrite the developer’s narratives, if they are clearly written?

Introduction Including Publisher’s Summary

 

Before I start this review, I want my readers to remember two facts; First, I own and almost exclusively use Adobe Acrobat Pro (now 8.1.2) for all of my PDF work and Two, I also, since Acrobat and Acrobat Pro are pricy tools ($160-220) do enjoy testing other PDF tools that can fulfill some of Acrobat’s function. These have included, all published in macC, several evolving versions of:

 

Product Name	Function
PDF2Office	A PDF document conversion and data extraction tool that converts PDF documents into fully editable Microsoft® Word, RTF, AppleWorks, HTML and other files recreating the original construction and layout of the document.
PDFKey Pro	Unlock and decrypt password-protected PDF documents. By removing editing and printing passwords if these have been forgotten.
PDFpen Pro	Split, combine, reorder, and augment PDFs with text and image overlays.
PDFLab	Lets you split and join PDF documents as well as insert images and blank pages. You will also be able to easily create PDF documents out of several images
PDFshrink	Reduce most PDF files— including those created by Mac OS X iLife and iWork applications, Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Word & PowerPoint—by as much as 90% of their original size.

 

When evaluation such products, I both test them to determine how well they do their job and whether I think they are good value compared to a discounted Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Pro.

 

deskUNPDF is a PDF converter that converts PDF's to Word (2004), Excel, OpenOffice, HTML, XML, Images, and more. Includes batch conversion and command line interface. Convert and edit the contents of PDF documents with deskUNPDF. Easily and quickly convert PDF’s into Word (.doc), Open Office (.odt), Excel (.xls), HTML, and many more formats. In addition the application has a very small footprint compared to applications such as PDF2Office and Acrobat Standard, both of which have such functionality as part of their functions.

 

Getting Started

 

You have two options for installing the product. In its installer volume, you can do a custom installation and uncheck the contextual menu integration if you so desire, or install the application by a simple drop and drag to your application folder. I used the installer because I wanted to activate contextual menu features and to work from within MS Word available. Unfortunately on my Leopard based system, these access functions did not work and time constraints did not allow me to contact the developer, despite deleting and reinstalling the application.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that you can eliminate the preview window as well as the open-converted panes to minimize screen space. On my 24” monitor it did not matter.

 

While deskUNPDF has available options to refine and optimize your document’s conversion, in most instances all that is needed is to open the PDF document from within the application, select the output format and click the Convert button. deskUNPDF does the work to optimize your conversion so it appears as close to the original as possible. If more is needed, advanced options features allow you to refine the format for any more specific output requirements.

 

Using the Software

 

I tested the product on both downloaded PDFs and PDF created from MS Word 2004 documents. The document complexity ranged from simple letters, documents, and illustrated recipes to material that was more highly formatted (e.g., tables and columns.) In addition, I converted a number of graphic containing PDFs and some straight PDF formatted graphics files, a process that was straightforward.

 

Since I have no need for conversions to a web friendly output, I did not test that output feature but conversion of one complex table to a data XML file went well and I easily pulled that information into FileMaker Pro.

 

Complex Inputs — I tested a number of files that contained information in multi-column format, or whose contents were text filled tables. These were output in their correct formats but some of the multiple paragraph containing table cells captured some paragraphs as “frames”; strange but easily fixed.

 

Tables — I did several tests in converting simple and somewhat complex technical tables from PDFs to both MSW and Excel files. These were full of numbers, symbols or short pieces of text. When the tables contained cells that well ordered, and regular (think checkerboard squares), the conversions went smoothly. The results were accurate both in content and formatting. This held true whether I was translating to either a DOC or RTF file.

However more complex tables did not convert well to MS Word or RTF. The example I used had a header title block, column headers and cells of data (a 5 x 5 array) footnotes. It contained oddly distributed sized merged cells in its data containing body. deskUNPDF was not useful for converting these tables to MS Word. Not only was formatting lost, but also an occasional number or letter had moved from its original table cell to an incorrect one. This was my only unacceptable result, in over three-dozen tests. But I didn’t despair, since as described below, success only took an added step. The complex table test was the hardest challenge I gave the software.

 

However converting such complex tables containing PDFs to an Excel file behaved perfectly. All items were not only correctly formatted but all the entries were accurate. That XLS file could then be exported to word in MS Office, keeping both its content and formatting intact.

 

deskUNPDF Technical Basis — The program quickly converts the entire document, including all the images, lines, and hyperlinks, and offers an accurate choice of fonts while maintaining the text layout from the document being converted. The Accu-Text technology digitally maps text placement and chooses the best font and font size to maintain the look of the original, but you can override the choices to change the layout manually. I chose to ignore the font selection capability because it was easier to change in MS Word.

 

When to Use deskUNPDF for Mac (Paraphrased Publisher’s Recommendations)

• Recovering PDF contents for editing
• Editing grammar and typos on a PDF
• Updating dates, times, making small revisions, etc.
• Modifying an image or text placement
• Migrating PDF's to ODT for standardization
• Improving PDF's accessibility with an HTML copy.

§       Changing line placement or colors

§       Removing watermarks - i.e. Draft

• Changing font appearance - i.e. color, size, styling
• Making thumbnail images of PDF pages for a gallery

Product Features Include: §    Uses Accu-Text Conversion Technology as its engine. This allows to the product to offer reliable reproduction regardless of the chosen output format. §    With deskUNPDF WYSIWYG Preview you can visually see how the converted document will look, highlighting the text, font size, and format of each page that is to be converted. §    Multiple output formats: Text (.txt), HTML (.html, .xhtml),Open Office (.odt), Microsoft Word 97-2003 RTF (.rtf), Microsoft Excel Workbook (.xls), Sony eReader BBeB format (.lrf) and various image formats.

• Makes available 4 Page Layout Options
• Has font replacement capability
• Allows batch conversion to any given conversion format

Discomforts

 

Dock Icon Not Active — I could not use the product icon in the Leopard dock to open and convert a PDF whether created in acrobat, Print to PDF (Apple, or downloaded from the web. Neither could I drop unopened PDF files on either the application’s icon or its alias.

 

The developer claims “deskUNPDF for Mac includes several ways to launch a conversion. PDF files can be opened directly from Microsoft Word, dragged onto the deskUNPDF desktop icon, via right-click. I could get neither of these features to work.

 

I was however able to use Apple’s contextual menu, feature using deskUNPDF feature, to transform PDF directly from my desktop but the mouse’s tail was very long (See the image below.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The GUI is Needlessly Awkward — In order to access a pdf, you must open it, navigate the finder to locate the PDF or group of PDFs, and then convert them to my desired format. There was no way to drop files into the products operating window. You do however have the choice of where you want the converted document to open; I chose the desktop.

 

The Converted File Titles Do Not Contain Files Extensions — When working conversion to a variety of file types, the product did not append an extension. This would be useful, especially with text-RTF-DOC or graphics formats. Having a file extension appended when saving the converted PDF would save typing it in. For those who are converting a largish number of files into different graphics formats, it would save some dancing around relative to predefining application in which to use the new files.

 

Handling Mixed Images and Text — All of the half dozen randomly selected image containing and otherwise highly formatted recipes I’d download for the web translated perfectly to MS Word. However, PDF’s with active links need item-by-item attention to reactivate them in MSW [Command-K.]

 

Conclusions and Recommendation

The product was easy to use, although I cheated and read the manual first, and met most of it’s developer’s claims. The conversions were, for the most part accurate, with respect to spelling, even when my text base input document was formatted in small font sizes. General layout was usually well preserved and the end conversion could be easily used and edited when I worked from RTF, TXT, and DOC output.

 

On occasion, despite what appeared accurately in preview made, I lost extra paragraph white spaces for paragraph-separated lists, but that was a trivial fix.

 

Although a bit more expensive then I’d have like for fair values, it is less pricy then available options of PDF2Office and Acrobat Standard. Try it; although one page only conversion in the demo is limited, I think the product will serve you well.

 

This is especially true of you are need to edit and otherwise work with web downloaded information in PDF format. The edit cycle is displayed below, the image also illustrates deskPDF and other of the vendors products.