Month: December 2020

Enhanced Mail Support in Latest Win2PDF 10 Update

Win2PDF has always had the capability to attach a new PDF file to a mail message, though the implementation was limited to the default MAPI mail client on the computer (typically Outlook).

Many users have asked us to support other mail programs and services, like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, to send files. Our latest 10.0.93 version of Win2PDF dramatically improves mail client support and allows for direct mail integrations with:

These mail programs can be set up using the new Configure Win2PDF Mail window, which can be accessed either from the Win2PDF Start menu program group (shown below):

[You can also use the Windows search box (the “magnifying glass” icon) and search for Configure Win2PDF Mail to open the configuration screen.]

Or, it can be accessed directly from the Win2PDF Desktop program, by going to File → Mail → Configure Mail (shown below):

Once the Configure Mail window is accessed you will have the following options to enter your mail settings:

To fill in the different mail settings, please see the individual support pages for Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo! Mail, or Custom SMTP Server.

After the mail program settings have been configured, you can send a PDF file using one of these two methods:

  1. Select the Send file… option on the Win2PDF file save window (if you are creating a new PDF file with Win2PDF), or
  1. Open a PDF file in the Win2PDF Desktop app and choose File → Mail → Send Mail (if you are just sending an existing PDF file)

And that’s it. You can download the latest 10.0.93 software (a free update for existing Win2PDF 10 users) from our Win2PDF 10 Update page.

As always, if you have any questions, just send a mail to [email protected].

[Case Study] Converting TIFF to PDF Using New Command Line Tools

Win2PDF has expanded its Command Line Interface to support two new conversion features.

  1. TIFF to PDF — This option converts TIFF graphic images into PDF files.
  1. PDF Image Only — This option converts PDF files to an Image Only format. Image Only PDF files can be used to make the PDF unsearchable, “flatten” text fields for security, speed up loading time for complex PDFs, and reduce the PDF file size.

As an example, consider this example we recently solved for a customer. They wanted to merge a scanned TIFF image to an existing text-based PDF file.

To accomplish this, they created a small batch file. The first line of the batch file converted the TIFF file to a PDF.

Win2Pdfd.exe tiff2pdf "1.tif" "1.pdf"

The 2nd line merged the PDF into the existing text PDF. (where “2.pdf” was an existing searchable text-based PDF).

Win2Pdfd.exe append "1.pdf" "2.pdf" "New.pdf"

The 3rd line flattened the file to an Image Only PDF. This made the combined PDF file unsearchable.

Win2Pdfd.exe imagepdf "New.pdf" "NewImageOnly.pdf" mono

In terms of formatting for the batch file, full path names were used so that it looked like this when the batch file is run from the Windows command prompt:

They had been struggling to find a solution to do this one particular document conversion, and the batch file solution not only provided the final document with the formatting they needed, but also provided the flexibility to integrate this into their existing document management process.

As we expand the options available in the Win2PDF Command Line Interface, the ability to do these types of highly customized and automated solutions is becoming easier, especially when coupled with Win2PDF Plug-Ins.

As always, if you have a particular conversion or process need for your PDF files, let us know if we can help.

Win2PDF as a Replacement for Google Chrome’s Discontinued “Save To Google Drive” Feature

Google’s Chrome web browser currently has a feature called “Save to Google Drive”. It appears in the printer list when printing from Chrome, and allows the user to print and save a web page directly to the user’s Google Drive account (and store as a PDF).

This feature will be going away on December 31, 2020, as Google deprecates its Google Cloud Print feature.

Fortunately, you can easily replace this feature using Win2PDF.  Just follow these steps.

 1)  Install the free Google Drive for Desktop application on your computer. This will create a folder on your computer that will be synced with your cloud-based Google Drive account. On your PC, you will see a new folder named “Google Drive”.

2)  Print from the Chrome browser and select “Win2PDF” as the printer.

3)  Save the PDF file to the “Google Drive Folder”.

4)  [Optional] Select “Save as type:” to be “Portable Document Format – Searchable (OCR PDF)”. With this option selected, not only will the PDF file be saved to your Google Drive account, but it will also be converted to a searchable PDF file. Normally, printing from Google Chrome creates an Image-only PDF file, but this option will produce a searchable PDF file with selectable text. [Note: You’ll need to download the optional Win2PDF Desktop with OCR Download to access this save as option.]

Once the file has been saved to your Google Drive folder, it will be synced with your cloud-based Google Drive account and be accessible anywhere.

As a side note, I’ve used this feature frequently as a quick way to save recipes that I find online. If I want to save them, I just go to Print -> Save to Google Drive and then pop them into my recipes folder for future reference. Because they are a PDF file stored in the cloud, I can access them from my iPhone if I am shopping at the store, or on my iPad if cooking in the kitchen.

Now I can still do that and best of all, the Win2PDF solution is actually better because of the ability to create searchable recipes!

Bon appetit!