Earlier this week Microsoft announced the availability of their latest operating system — Windows 11 .
This is not a universal upgrade like Windows 10, however. Many PCs won’t be able to upgrade to Windows 11 due to hardware limitations. You can check if your PC can be upgraded using Microsoft’s PC Health Check app.
Win2PDF supports Windows 11, and continues to support older operating systems like Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and even Windows XP.
While you may be using Windows 11 as the default OS if you purchase a new PC soon, we expect many organizations to continue with Windows 10 as most of the changes in Windows 11 are centered on the user interface and user experience.
If you do upgrade or get a new PC, make sure you are using the latest Win2PDF update for best results.
We have just released a significant new update (Win2PDF 10 build 116) to our Win2PDF download page. As with other recent updates, this is a FREE upgrade for all Win2PDF users using Win2PDF 7 or higher software.
While we’ve previewed several of these features in blog postings over the past several months, now they have all been collected into an official release with enhanced usability features, new and improved command line features to assist with automated PDF workflows, and bug fixes and performance enhancements. It includes:
Right-click context menu in Windows explorer
1) Usability
Added support for directly converting image files and HTML files from a Windows Explorer Convert with Win2PDF context menu. To convert a JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, or HTML file to PDF, right click and choose “Convert with Win2PDF (see image above).
Added support for viewing PDF files from a Windows Explorer View with Win2PDF context menu. To view a PDF with Win2PDF Desktop, right click and choose “View with Win2PDF”.
2) Command Line Usage and Automation Enhancements
Added support for using web addresses (URLs) for input files in most command line features.
Added support for GETCONTENTSEARCH command line to return text after a search term in a PDF file. This can be used to rename PDF files based on the contents of the file in a Microsoft Power Automate Script.
Microsoft announced details of its latest version of Windows operating system last week. Windows 11, as it will be called, will have some new features and interface changes, and will be a free update to existing Windows PCs. It will be available later this year.
Will Win2PDF support it?
Yes! Win2PDF will fully support Windows 11* when it is officially released. We intend to release Win2PDF on the same day that the Windows 11 software is made available.
* Just as with Windows 10, Win2PDF will only support Windows 11 with the Intel and AMD processors (which accounts for most PCs); it will not support Windows 11 on the Qualcomm (ARM) processors.
Will my current PC be able to run Windows 11?
Microsoft has an overview of how to find device specification requirements, versions, and languages available for Windows 11. They also have an app you can download to see if your existing PC will be capable of installing Windows 11.
Will there be a charge for the Windows 11 Win2PDF update?
No. It will be a free update to all Win2PDF 7 and later versions of Win2PDF.
If I get a new Windows 11 PC, will I be able to transfer my license to a brand new PC?
Yes. Just install Win2PDF on your new PC and use your existing license code to activate the software.
We’ll have further announcements prior to the release of both Windows 11 and Win2PDF later this year. If you have any questions in the meantime, just let us know.
For centuries people used a wax seal on letters to prove to the recipient that the letter was from a trusted source and had not been tampered with. Did you know there is a way to do this digitally with your PDF file?
We recently added a feature that allows you to apply a digital certificate to a PDF file when it is created by Win2PDF. The certificate — which can be created by you, or purchased from a certificate authority — allows the recipient to verify that the file was ‘signed’ from the sender and that it hasn’t been altered or modified.
Before we get into the specifics of this feature, we should probably do a little explanation of terms surrounding digital signatures and what is commonly known as “digitally signing” documents, because it can be a confusing topic.
There are several ways of doing this that largely break down into 2 categories.
Electronic Signatures (or e-signatures): This method of signing a PDF allows the user to apply a simple image representing a person’s handwritten signature. It is simple and easy to implement, and is legally permissible for many types of documents, but also not very sophisticated. For example, it would be easy for someone to scan a signature of someone else, and then use it to apply to PDF files without the signature owner ever even knowing about it. Aside from the representation of the signature, there isn’t a formal way of authenticating the creator is who they say they are.
Digital Signatures: This method of signing is more sophisticated and preferred by companies that require a greater level of source authentication. With this type of digital signature, an encrypted certificate is embedded within the PDF file. The recipient of the file can view the certificate and verify exactly “who” created it. For example, if I create a trusted certificate as John Doe from Win2PDF Sales and applied it to a PDF file, the receiver of that file would be able to verify that “John Doe” really was the creator of the file and that the document hasn’t been modified since it was signed. There are also different types of certificates that can be used, from simple digital IDs that you can create yourself in Adobe Reader, to more advanced ones that can be purchased and verified by an approved certificate authority (CA).
The new Win2PDF feature utilizes this second method — digital signature, or digitally signing documents using certificates. It requires a valid Win2PDF Pro software license (request a trial version if you want to try this), and it assumes that you have already either created or obtained your own digital certificate. Adobe’s web site provides documentation on how to create your own Digital ID in Adobe Reader.
Here is an overview of the steps needed to apply a digital certificate to a PDF file using Win2PDF:
Download and install Win2PDF Pro 10.0.108 or later software. [Note: This links to the Win2PDF Pro Service Pack for the latest version.]
Once these 2 components are installed, you will see a new checkbox on the Win2PDF file save window. If this box is checked, you will get a pop-up to select a certificate when the PDF file is saved.
When the PDF file is saved, choose your Digital Certificate. If you used Adobe Reader to create your digital ID certificate, for example, the file would have a .pfx file extension and be located on your hard drive folder named:
When the Digital Signature file is applied, it will require you to enter in a password to complete the certificate application to the PDF file. This password is something you set up when creating your Digital ID or obtained from a certificate authority.
Lastly, when you open the PDF file in Adobe Reader, Adobe recognizes the PDF file as being signed with a valid digital certificate. You can see how this is displayed in Adobe below.
If you examine the certificate in the Adobe Reader software, it will show the details that were used. Here, the recipient could verify that the file was signed by John Doe from Win2PDF Sales.
This has just been an overview of the new Digital Signature feature in Win2PDF Pro. If you have any questions please let us know and we’ll be glad to provide more assistance.
Give it a look. This may make it easier to get a basic understanding of how these two tools work together, and how you can take advantage of other automated PDF workflows.
We recently stumbled across this article outlining a problem with 2020 tax returns saved as a PDF file.
Q: I’ve been using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader DC to fill-in and save PDF tax forms on my PC. But when I recently called up a stored tax form, the data I’d filled-in appeared for a moment, then disappeared, leaving just a blank tax form. I then called up other tax forms that I’d saved earlier, and found that they still had their data. I then tried using another PC, and found that some stored tax forms contained the data I’d entered, while others had gone blank. Adobe won’t help me with this problem because I’m using a free app. What’s wrong and what can I do?
In this case, there was a glitch in the PDF viewer where the filled-in data appeared to “go missing”, even though the information was saved in the file. This type of problem is caused by PDF layers, and it can be easily fixed by flattening the PDF file.
Basically, flattening the PDF means compressing all of the data onto a single layer. No data or information will appear to be missing — all of it will be visible at all times — so the problem experienced with the “missing data” in the tax forms will be eliminated.
While there are several ways to flatten a PDF file, one of the easiest is to just print the document from Adobe Reader (or any PDF viewer) to the Win2PDF printer using the PDF Image Only option. That will flatten it automatically.
After you print to Win2PDF, the resulting PDF will no longer be searchable. If you want the text in the flattened PDF to be searchable, you can download and install the “Win2PDF Desktop with OCR” add-on and select “Portable Document Format – Searchable” as the Win2PDF “Save As Type”.
Over the next series of posts we’ll show some examples of how this can be done in a real-world context using Win2PDF.
First, let’s start off by using an example where we want to automatically rename a bunch of PDF invoices that are stored in a folder. And then suppose we not only want to rename the PDF files, but we want the new file names to be based on some content within the original files, such as the number following the word “INVOICE”.
Notice how the Win2PDF command line getcontentsearch feature is used. It allows us to search for the word “INVOICE” in the PDF file, and then return the following content (in this case, the INVOICE number) to the standard output. After trimming any extraneous spaces from this invoice number, the PDF file is renamed to be that invoice number.
You can use the graphical user interface to make your own flow, or you can copy the following into a new Power Automate Desktop flow if you want to use this as a starting point for your project:
# This flow searches the contents of PDF files in the selected folder for SearchText, and renames the PDF files based on the text immediately following SearchText. Change the SearchText variable to the desired search field. Note : the SearchText field is case sensitive.
SET SearchText TO $'''INVOICE :'''
Display.SelectFolder Description: $'''Select Folder to Rename''' IsTopMost: False SelectedFolder=> SelectedFolder ButtonPressed=> ButtonPressed3
Folder.GetFiles Folder: SelectedFolder FileFilter: $'''*.pdf''' IncludeSubfolders: False FailOnAccessDenied: True SortBy1: Folder.SortBy.NoSort SortDescending1: False SortBy2: Folder.SortBy.NoSort SortDescending2: False SortBy3: Folder.SortBy.NoSort SortDescending3: False Files=> Files
LOOP FOREACH CurrentItem IN Files
# Search for %SearchText% field and return following text in CommandOutput using the following Win2PDF command line:
# C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\3\win2pdfd.exe getcontentsearch "%CurrentItem%" "" "%SearchText%"
System.RunDOSCommand DOSCommandOrApplication: $'''C:\\Windows\\System32\\spool\\drivers\\x64\\3\\win2pdfd.exe getcontentsearch \"%CurrentItem%\" \"\" \"%SearchText%\"''' StandardOutput=> CommandOutput StandardError=> CommandErrorOutput ExitCode=> CommandExitCode
IF CommandExitCode = 0 THEN
Text.Trim Text: CommandOutput TrimOption: Text.TrimOption.Both TrimmedText=> TrimmedText
File.Rename Files: CurrentItem NewName: $'''%SelectedFolder%\\%TrimmedText%''' KeepExtension: True IfFileExists: File.IfExists.Overwrite RenamedFiles=> RenamedFiles
ELSE
Display.ShowMessageWithTimeout Title: $'''Win2PDF Renamer''' Message: $'''Could not find \"INVOICE :\" field for file %CurrentItem%''' Icon: Display.Icon.None Buttons: Display.Buttons.OK DefaultButton: Display.DefaultButton.Button1 IsTopMost: False Timeout: 10 ButtonPressed=> ButtonPressed4
END
END
This example shows one way to use Win2PDF’s automation features to create a solution unique to your workflow. It also uses features that were added in the latest Win2PDF 10.0.100 update, so make sure you are using the latest Win2PDF 10 Update when trying any of the Power Automate Desktop features.
Can you think of any similar cases that you might use? If so, drop us a line. We’ll have more examples coming soon.
The time honored tradition continues! Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which means 6 more weeks of winter AND new Win2PDF 10 features to help you get through it!
Some of the new features have been documented in previous blog posts, but now those features (and some others) have all been collected into a single update. This Win2PDF 10 (build 98) software is a free update to licensed Win2PDF 10 users.
The biggest changes are related to enhanced mail support for sending PDF documents, new command line options for converting and manipulating image and PDF files, and general bug fixes and stability improvements. Here’s a summary of the changes.
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:
TIFF to PDF — This option converts TIFF graphic images into PDF files.
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.
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.
PDF Blog - Topics from the makers of Win2PDF 