Tag: save as text

Update to Win2PDF Includes new Text to PDF Options for Legacy Reports

The latest Win2PDF update includes an additional command line feature to convert reports and other specially formatted documents to PDF using a fixed width font. This feature is needed for some reports to be rendered and viewed correctly, since many applications (especially older ones) were designed to send reports to a line printer or a simple fixed width text file. The results only look correct if each character is equally spaced.

Previously, the Win2PDF txt2pdf command line option would create a PDF file with variable width text. With the new command line option – formattedtxt2pdf – users can output the file with a fixed width text font instead of variable width text.

For example, here’s a portion of a report generated by a legacy application and saved to a PDF file using the original txt2pdf command.

Notice that the report doesn’t look right because the characters aren’t evenly spaced. However, here is the same report converted to a pdf file with the new formattedtxt2pdf command.

Now it looks correct, even though the text is exactly the same.

In addition to this command line feature, there’s a new Win2PDF Reformat As Text plug-in to simplify the creation of the files using this method.

First, download the plug-in setup file and double-click on it to configure the Win2PDF Reformat As Text plug-in. You will be prompted to enter the paper size, font size, and margin size to configure the plug-in values as shown below.

You may need to adjust these options to allow all text to fit on a page. Then, after the plug-in has been installed and configured, you can check the new box on the Win2PDF file save window labeled Reformat As Text. When saved, the fixed width formatted PDF file will be created.

Give it a try and if you have any questions, let us know.

The PDF Pro Tip That Could Have Saved Paul Manafort’s Lawyers From Regret

We just released a free update to Win2PDF (version 10.0.40) that has a new feature that could have been useful for Paul Manafort’s lawyers, as this Wired article explains.

“The latest reminder came this week, when [Paul Manafort’s] defense lawyers failed to sufficiently redact portions of a court filing submitted on Tuesday, responding to Robert Mueller’s claims that Manafort violated his plea agreement with the special counsel by lying to prosecutors.”

What is the new feature?  Well, it’s a enhancement to our Win2PDF Desktop app that allows you to extract all of the text from a PDF file and then save the results to a simple TEXT file.  All you need to do is drop the PDF file on the Win2PDF Desktop icon and then select ‘Extract Text‘ from the pop-up menu shown below.

extract_text

This would have turned the following redacted Manafort court document (shown as a PDF file):

manafort1

into this TEXT file:

manafort2

You can see that the redacted text in the PDF file converted completely to readable text in the text file.

This feature, obviously, wasn’t created for the purpose of exposing redacted text, but it does exemplify a case where it would have been useful.  We’ve had many other customers who were looking for an easy way to convert PDF documents into TEXT files for other business purposes.

You can download the latest update (free for licensed Win2PDF 7 or Win2PDF 10 users) from our support download page.