Author: Brian

Working from Home Due to Coronavirus? Remember WinPDF Can Help

With more and more office workers now being asked to work from home, it’s probably a good time to revisit how PDF files can help with your day-to-day workflow. Here are a few tips:

  • First and foremost — Win2PDF makes it easy to go paperless! Just use PDF files for document transfers instead of printing and sharing paper! PDF is an acronym for Portable Document Format and it can be shared with any type of user using any type of operating system. If you send a Word or Excel file, a smartphone user or a coworker on an Apple iMac or Macbook may not be able to open the document if they don’t have a Word or Excel viewer installed. PDF files, on the other hand, are universal and can be read by Windows computers, Apple computers, Chromebooks, Unix and Linux computers, iPhones, Android phones, tablets, etc.
  • Second, if you’re using Win2PDF, remember to use the ‘Send file’ option to automatically attach a PDF file to a new email message. It’ll save you a few clicks each time you create a PDF file if you need to share it with others.
  • Fourth, even the free Adobe Acrobat Reader DC program (which is installed on most PCs) has basic tools to comment, annotate, and sign documents. It’s a good way to share feedback when you do send or receive PDF files.
  • Fifth, convert legacy reporting programs to paperless systems by using the Win2PDF Auto-name feature. Need to share different reports with different departments? Add separate copies of Win2PDF and configure them for users of each department. Once reports are in PDF format instead of paper, they’re easy to view and share with users wherever they are located.
  • And lastly, make sure Win2PDF is loaded on your home PC as well. Did you know that the Win2PDF end-user license agreement allows you to install the desktop software on both a work computer and a home computer at no additional charge? You do now.

Pro Tip: How to Print a Folder of PDFs to a Paper Printer

Here’s a little trick that may come in helpful this tax season:

Suppose you have a directory of PDF files that you wanted to print to paper. You could open each one individually from Adobe Reader or some other PDF viewer and print. Or, you could use a built-in command line feature of the Win2PDF Desktop app to do this for you.

First, open a command prompt from the Windows Start menu search area by typing in “cmd”:

Second, in the command prompt window, change to the directory where your PDF files reside. The command to change folders will look like this:

cd C:\users\Public\Documents

And lastly, type the following command which uses the Windows “for” command:

for %i in (*.pdf) do C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\3\win2pdfd.exe printpdf “%i” “printername”

Note: You may need to change the path location of the Win2PDF Desktop app, depending on what version of Windows you have installed. You can read more about finding the correct location for your PC at our Win2PDF Desktop command line support page.

Here’s an example where we have 12 monthly PDF receipts in a folder and want to send copies of all of them to the printer named “SalesLaserPrinter”.

In the above example, all of the PDF files in this C:\Users\Public\Documents folder will be printed to the SalesLaserPrinter.

The Windows “for” command can also be used to do batch processing of PDF files using any of the other Win2PDF command line operations. Try it for yourself and if you have any questions, contact us at our support page.

Microsoft Officially Ends Support for Windows 7, Win2PDF Doesn’t

Earlier this month Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 7.

“The specific end of support day for Windows 7 was January 14, 2020. Technical assistance and software updates from Windows Update that help protect your PC are no longer available for the product. Microsoft strongly recommends that you move to Windows 10 to avoid a situation where you need service or support that is no longer available.”

This will pose problems for many companies, especially considering the fact that this operating system is still being used on approximately one-third of PCs globally.

Many customers have been hesitant to move to Windows 10 for a variety of reasons, and one significant issue is that some software applications that worked in Windows 7 don’t work in Windows 10. Since upgrades to Windows 10 can break older versions of business applications, IT departments have been reluctant to make the changes so far until they work out solutions that are compatible.

The good news for Win2PDF users is that Win2PDF 10 fully supports both Windows 7 and Windows 10, so there should not be any issues as far as Win2PDF is concerned. And we plan to continue support of both operating systems as well as Windows XP and Windows Vista for the foreseeable future.

One note, however: Anyone using the older Win2PDF 3.5 or earlier versions (prior to 2009) will need to upgrade to the most recent Win2PDF 10 version to use the software with Windows 10.

Win2PDF Celebrates 20 Years!

Now that we’ve made it to 2020, we’re proud to announce that this year marks Win2PDF’s 20th year anniversary. We sold our first desktop version of Win2PDF in 2000, and we’ve spent the last 20 years expanding and improving the software based on feedback from our users. We’re proud to be an independent software creator and we wouldn’t have made it without the support of all the Win2PDF users. So to our customers we say THANK YOU!

After the initial desktop Win2PDF software was released, we introduced Win2PDF Pro (with expanded capabilities for businesses needing strong document encryption, watermarks, and other advanced features). Then we added our Win2PDF Terminal Server Edition (TSE) and Win2PDF Pro TSE versions, which supported Microsoft and Citrix terminal server environments for multiple users and server-based applications. We’ve also created and expanded developer APIs and introduced a developer version of Win2PDF that will allow other programs to distribute a special version of Win2PDF with their own applications.

Through the years we’ve continued to update and expand the features of Win2PDF, added a Win2Image printer (included with all Win2PDF purchases) that saves files in a variety of image formats, supported every major Windows desktop and server operating system at the date of its release, and provided free utilities and documentation to aid users with a variety of PDF solutions.

So what about our plans for the future? We can summarize our plans in three words: Support, Continuation and Enhancement. Our focus is on expanding the Win2PDF product line to provide continued support of all new operating system releases from Microsoft, expanding the capabilities of Win2PDF, and focusing on customer solutions and ease of use issues.

Once again, to our users… THANK YOU!

New Watermark Enhancements in Win2PDF Pro

Our latest release of Win2PDF Pro (10.0.60) has a couple of new enhancements to the watermark/background feature.

The first enhancement is that you can now apply a PDF watermark or background that contains a clickable link to an external web page. When you select the watermark in the PDF Options… you can check “Allow Links in Watermark” as shown below.

This can be quite useful for things like company letterheads, where you may wish to have a clickable link to the company home page. Or, you may wish to have a direct link in a PDF invoice that takes the customer directly to a payment page on your web site. Here is an example of what a PDF invoice would look like after a payment watermark has been applied.

We’ve heard from several customers who have needed this feature to automate their payments and invoicing process with Win2PDF.

Additionally, there are two new options on the PDF Options… Watermark tab that allow you to apply a watermark to ONLY the first page, ONLY the last page, or to all pages. Previously it applied to all pages only. Here is a screen shot of the new options.

These new features are now available in the 10.0.60 release of Win2PDF Pro*. If you have a licensed version of Win2PDF Pro, you can download the latest Win2PDF Pro Service Pack at the Win2PDF download page.

* The standard edition of Win2PDF does not have the watermark feature enabled. This is only available in Win2PDF Pro. Standard Edition users can purchase a Win2PDF Pro Upgrade if this feature is needed.

How to Save a Web Page as a PDF

In our last post, we showed how a web page could be saved as a PDF file. However, the method outlined in that post was ONLY available to Apple iPhone or iPad users using iOS 13 or later, so it significantly limited its usefulness, especially for desktop PC users or users of other phones or devices like Android or Chrome.

Well, good news! We have just introduced a new feature on our web site called HTML to PDF. If you’re navigating from the main win2pdf.com home page, it is located under FEATURES as shown below with the blue arrow.

HTML to PDF is a free web service and it allows you to enter in the web site address (URL) of any public web site and click Submit. Once submitted, the web page will automatically be converted to a PDF file directly from your browser. You do not need to download or install any software on your computer to create the PDF file.

For example, suppose you want to save an article about how to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. Find the article you want to save online, copy the web page address, and then paste it into the HTML to PDF web page.

After you click Submit, the web page will be converted to a PDF file and returned to your web browser. If you have Adobe Reader installed as your default PDF viewer, it will open automatically and you’ll see the PDF file on your screen, where you can save it, edit it, or do anything you want with it.

For security reasons, this feature currently only works with web pages that are public and do NOT require a user login (like email, online banking, etc.) If you need to convert a secure page, you can download and install Win2PDF and print the web page to the Win2PDF printer.

This is part of a new set of capabilities that we are developing for Win2PDF. If you are a company or a software developer interested in an HTML to PDF API (where the PDF is generated as a cloud-based service as opposed to being installed as a local software component), let us know and we can provide more details.

In the meantime, give it a try and let us know if you have any questions. It may be a useful tool to share with friends or families this Thanksgiving… and it’s free.

How to Save a Full-Page Screenshot as a PDF in iOS 13

If you are an iPhone or iPad user, the latest iOS 13 software update adds an interesting new feature. With the Safari web browser, you can now take a screenshot of an entire web page (not just the visible portion on the screen) and save the web page to a PDF file. This article details the procedure for doing so.

I’ve found this quite useful on a few occasions where I want to save the contents of a web page that I come across on my iPhone, and then edit the PDF file later to extract specific pages or images that I want to use elsewhere.

Note, this feature is specific to iOS 13 devices and only works with the Safari web browser (not Chrome or Firefox, unfortunately).

Content-based File Naming with Win2PDF

*** NEW FEATURE ALERT ***

In our latest Win2PDF 10.0.58 update we added a new feature for content-based file naming. It allows a PDF file to be named based on a certain word or set of characters that reside inside of the document being printed.

Here is the customer situation that prompted the new feature:

A county sheriff’s department wanted to generate PDF files from a legacy AS/400 application. A secretary named the PDF files based on a document number that was listed in the original document, and because she did so manually it was time-consuming and error-prone.

An example transport order from the sheriff’s department looked like this:

sheriff1

With the content-based file naming feature in Win2PDF, however, this process is automated. It allows Win2PDF to search the text of a document being printed, find a target search word, and use the following word as the PDF file name. It requires that PDF files contain text with a common search word that exists in all PDF files. (*Note: The “word” can be numbers or any character string that has a space before and after the “word”).

In the sheriff’s example, the content search word is specified as “DOC #:” in the Win2PDF Admin Utility.

sheriff2

Then, in the Document section of the Win2PDF file save options, the “User Defined” field was enabled with “%PDFAutoNameContentSearch%.pdf” as the file name.

win2pdf-auto-name-content-based-naming

The result? When each file is printed, Win2PDF searches for the document number in the original file, and then automatically names the PDF file with this number. No possibility of manual errors or extra time involved.  In this case, the file was automatically named “118277.pdf” when the file was printed.

Again, this was a relatively simple modification that we were able to do for customer that had a particular need and had no ability to change the original AS/400 program printing the documents.

If you have a similar need, let us know and we may be able to help.

How to Create an Image from a PDF File

Suppose you have a PDF file that contains a certain page, photo, or diagram that you want to save as an image (to use in another document, for example).  How can this be done with Win2PDF?

When you install Win2PDF on your computer, it creates two different printers.  The most commonly used, obviously, is the “Win2PDF” printer.  But there is also a “Win2Image” printer that can be used to create image files in a variety of formats.

Win2Image and Win2PDF in the printers folder

The general process to save an image from a PDF file is:

  •  Open the PDF file in Adobe Reader, or any other PDF viewer application
  •  Select ‘Print’ from Adobe Reader and choose the printer named ‘Win2Image’

Select Win2Image in the Printers drop down menu

  •  Select the page you want to extract or save as an image

Select page number to extract and save as an image file

  •  Select the output format you want the new file to be.  You can save color or black & white versions in a variety of formats like JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, and BMP.

Select File format for the new image file

  •  Save

And that’s it.  You can now edit this new image file (crop, resize, etc.) with an image editor and insert it (if desired) into any other application.

Win2PDF for the Enterprise: Integration

In our last post, we talked about how Win2PDF can be customized for the enterprise.  In this post, we’ll continue the theme of enterprise users but focus on how Win2PDF can be integrated with other applications or business processes.

img_488306First, all of the Win2PDF products make use of the standard Windows API for printers. This means other applications can print to Win2PDF automatically, without any user interaction.  It does require some level of technical proficiency in programming, but there are a variety of programming environments we have documentation for, including Visual Basic (VB), Visual C for Crystal Reports, .NET, and Microsoft Access.  For a broader perspective all all features, just visit the Developer Information section of the Win2PDF user guide.

This in and of itself is a powerful tool that allows enterprises to create PDF files with specific naming conventions, file locations, and output options automatically.

Other useful features for incorporating Win2PDF with enterprise processes are:

  • Post-action setting:  This is a registry setting that can be set to allow the PDF created by Win2PDF to be passed to another program.  This can be useful for doing a secondary step with the PDF file, like processing it into a document management, email, printing, or reporting application.
  • Command-Line interface:  This was something we recently added and dedicated a blog post to it earlier this year.  It supports simple command line access to Win2PDF for merging, compressing, extracting pages, encrypting, and a variety of other PDF functions.
  • Win2PDF Mail Helper:  This free utility provides a SMTP mail client that can be used to send PDF files via email without user interaction.

Basically, if you have the ability to modify the application you are using to generate PDF files, using the integration options described here will give you the most powerful and flexible options to link PDF files into your workflow processes.  If you do not have the ability to modify the application, then the customization options for the enterprise would be the best option.

Let us know if you have questions about these or any other integration issues.  Again, if you can think of a situation where your PDF files can be incorporated into an enterprise process, there’s a good chance we’ve already figured out a way to make it happen.