Abbyy PDF Transformer 3 Pro

Those looking to use Adobe’s widespread document format for presentation or distribution of documents will find no shortage of programs to manage PDF files, which vary from free tools offering basic functions to more advanced editing and conversion utilities.

Abbyy’s PDF Transformer falls somewhere in the middle. For advanced users it offers compatibility with the PDF archive format to ensure all elements of a document are retained for future distribution and marking to make large documents easier to browse.

Features that are likely to be more widely appreciated by home users include the ability to convert a range of Microsoft Office formats including Word, Excel, Powerpoint and HTML files and the ability to compress or password-protect documents during the conversion process.

This is handled very well through the Convert PDF application, which is one of four separate tools supplied in the package. The others include a screenshot reader, another tool that will create a PDF from any compatible format and a utility to combine multiple documents into a single PDF. All of these worked very well, and were fast and intuitive without requiring a lot of knowledge. This is in fact one of the software’s biggest strengths and though some tweaking and restructuring may be necessary from less PDF-friendly applications such as Excel, generally the program goes about its business with a minimum of fuss.

Additional tools, such as the ability to black out sensitive information, inclusion of web links and the fact that most of these tools are available through the Windows right-click menu, improve things further. That said, one omission is the program’s inability to actually edit PDF files, something other programs usually offer. That’s a useful function and it’s a shame it’s not included here.

At £60, PDF Transformer is more expensive than some similar products, with only the extended Office document support and features such as PDF/A compatibility justifying the added cost. If it’s more basic conversion and management you’re after, there are cheaper packages that do this very well, even if they aren’t quite as nice to use.