PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source
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Ah well I'll take one for from your playbook you gave me consider possibly hosting Adobe Acrobat in RDS. I think I did about a year ago and worked fine from my Chromebook. Otherwise I hate Adobe's pricing. Even for me being a non profit they cap us off and still charge us premium rate for Acrobat. At best I'm able to get cost around $50-75 but with caveats, aka being forced to use the online service, not the actual desktop app.
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I still have a version about 10 years old in the office!
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As an suggestion also ignore using those free websites that convert them to word docs. Some actually do a great job. But some end up creating crap from their output. We tried that 2-3 years ago. Some folks (less than 3) still clamor on to that method, but in my office as much as possible I try to keep our data in a database which can export to word or pdf as necessary. I know I know different topic you want to open/edit them not just view.
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We've got someone testing out LibreOffice Draw 6 now, to see how much of what they need it will do.
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@scottalanmiller said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
We've got someone testing out LibreOffice Draw 6 now, to see how much of what they need it will do.
Its pretty slow for me when loading a pdf document with a lot of pages. And the text on some of the pages is not formatted correctly.
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Scott it will work but your mileage will vary. There is more than one kind of PDF version so it really depends on the source of where you "pulling" the pdfs from. Are they PDF's they are getting from other companies (like marketing stuff) that they wanna pull data out of? Those are the worst usually.
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@krisleslie said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
Scott it will work but your mileage will vary. There is more than one kind of PDF version so it really depends on the source of where you "pulling" the pdfs from. Are they PDF's they are getting from other companies (like marketing stuff) that they wanna pull data out of? Those are the worst usually.
I don't really have a good idea of what the use case is, yet.
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I use Master PDF
It's a cross platform PDF editor for macOS, Windows and Linux.
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@fateknollogee thank you sir!
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I’ve done it with Inkscape before. That’s not too bad.
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@stacksofplates said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
I’ve done it with Inkscape before. That’s not too bad.
I noticed a lot of sites recommending that, as well.
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I've used pdftk and pdfsam for merging before.
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I recommend PDFElement as @JaredBusch noted and Pdf Architect. They both work well at a decent price. Foxit Reader allows you to comment PDF like a lot of other tools but those are my recommendations.
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@scottalanmiller said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@krisleslie said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
I have a side question, is this for the legal industry or just general use?
General, it is sales people requesting it.
What is the possibility of using a converter to convert it to LibreOffice and then all future edits are done with LO... And just use the Export to PDF?
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@scottalanmiller said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@krisleslie said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
If you want to keep it simple, if you head over to ninite.com they have:
Foxit Reader
Alternative PDF Reader 9.0.1.1049
LibreOffice
Free Office Suite 6.0.2 (JRE recommended)
SumatraPDF
Lightweight PDF Reader 3.1.2
CutePDF
Print Documents as PDF Files 3.2
PDFCreator
Print Documents as PDF Files 3.1.2.10844
OpenOfficeMost of those are readers, though. Foxit, for example, to edit is $130.
Yeah, but it works well and is cheaper than Adobe Pro. Foxit is our go to as well.
I should mention there are some users who need Adobe Pro where Foxit doesn't work 100%. But the details I don't know there.
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@tim_g said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@scottalanmiller said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@krisleslie said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
If you want to keep it simple, if you head over to ninite.com they have:
Foxit Reader
Alternative PDF Reader 9.0.1.1049
LibreOffice
Free Office Suite 6.0.2 (JRE recommended)
SumatraPDF
Lightweight PDF Reader 3.1.2
CutePDF
Print Documents as PDF Files 3.2
PDFCreator
Print Documents as PDF Files 3.1.2.10844
OpenOfficeMost of those are readers, though. Foxit, for example, to edit is $130.
Yeah, but it works well and is cheaper than Adobe Pro. Foxit is our go to as well.
I should mention there are some users who need Adobe Pro where Foxit doesn't work 100%. But the details I don't know there.
Foxit is what we already had. Looking if saving money from that is viable.
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@scottalanmiller Any update from whoever is evaluating LibreOffice?
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@scottalanmiller said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@tim_g said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@scottalanmiller said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@krisleslie said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
If you want to keep it simple, if you head over to ninite.com they have:
Foxit Reader
Alternative PDF Reader 9.0.1.1049
LibreOffice
Free Office Suite 6.0.2 (JRE recommended)
SumatraPDF
Lightweight PDF Reader 3.1.2
CutePDF
Print Documents as PDF Files 3.2
PDFCreator
Print Documents as PDF Files 3.1.2.10844
OpenOfficeMost of those are readers, though. Foxit, for example, to edit is $130.
Yeah, but it works well and is cheaper than Adobe Pro. Foxit is our go to as well.
I should mention there are some users who need Adobe Pro where Foxit doesn't work 100%. But the details I don't know there.
Foxit is what we already had. Looking if saving money from that is viable.
There's probably copyrights and stuff with PDF. Otherwise PDF editors I'm sure would be more abundant. I know of no real ones that don't cost a decent amount of money. You're probably stuck paying for something like that, or change format.
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@scottalanmiller said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@tim_g said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@scottalanmiller said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
@krisleslie said in PDF Editor Alternatives, Preferably Open Source:
If you want to keep it simple, if you head over to ninite.com they have:
Foxit Reader
Alternative PDF Reader 9.0.1.1049
LibreOffice
Free Office Suite 6.0.2 (JRE recommended)
SumatraPDF
Lightweight PDF Reader 3.1.2
CutePDF
Print Documents as PDF Files 3.2
PDFCreator
Print Documents as PDF Files 3.1.2.10844
OpenOfficeMost of those are readers, though. Foxit, for example, to edit is $130.
Yeah, but it works well and is cheaper than Adobe Pro. Foxit is our go to as well.
I should mention there are some users who need Adobe Pro where Foxit doesn't work 100%. But the details I don't know there.
Foxit is what we already had. Looking if saving money from that is viable.
PDFElement is $100, so it is a savings. But savings enough to retrain users? Maybe not.
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For editing only free alternative I've found is LibreOffice, but it quite limited.
For merging I like pdf24, It works great.