Warwick Business School currently uses Adobe Acrobat 8 as its PDF writing software. This was purchased in 2005 at a cost then of around GBP50 per licence (30 concurrent licences). The latest version of Acrobat made by Adobe is v10.
Since the licence was bought, the University of Warwick has purchased a site licence for Nuance PDF Converter Enterprise. This is available for installation on all Warwick/WBS-owned PCs as well as the personal computers of students and staff (for work purposes).
Given that our version of Acrobat is now over 5 years old we are considering replacing Acrobat 8.0 with PDF Converter Enterprise 7 on all WBS computers. This page compares functionality that WBS users have indicated is important to their work. If you have other requirements of PDF converting software please let us know on help at wbs dot ac dot uk .
| Functionality |
Acrobat 8 |
PDF Converter Enterprise 7 |
| Highlight text |
Yes |
Available via a toolbar shortcut (along with Underline and strikethrough). Also accessible via the 'Comments' menu. |
| Typewriter |
Yes |
Available under Tools > Typewriter >Typewriter tool |
| Extract pages |
Yes |
Available under Document > Pages (or via keyboard shortcut) |
| Crop pages |
Yes |
Available under Document > Pages (or via keyboard shortcut) |
| Delete pages |
Yes |
Available under Document > Pages (or via keyboard shortcut) |
| Ability to batch process (including scripting) |
|
Batch processing available under Document > Advanced Processing > Batch processing
Scripting available under Document > Javascript
|
| Ability to secure documents |
Has options for restricting:
- Printing
- Document Assembly
- Content Copying
- Content copying for accessibility
- Page Extraction
- Commenting
- Filling of form fields
- Signing
- Creation of Template Pages
|
Document > Security > Secure Document
Has option for restricting:
- Printing
- High Resolution Printing
- Document Assembly
- Content Copying or Extraction
- Modifying Documents
- Page Extraction
- Accessibility Access
- Commenting
- Form Field Fill-in or Signing
|
| Convert PDF documents back to Word documents |
|
Can save PDFs as Office documents (e.g. Word) or images. Performed well in testing but converted version needs checking manually. This option should only be used when necessary. It is always better to go back to the original source document and edit that rather than converting back from a PDF. |
Some external reviews of PDF Converter:
