Scansoft PDF Converter 2.0 - (PDF to Word)

Scansoft's PDF Converter allows me to take one of my US supplier's brochures and modify it for Canadian content by allowing me to FLAWLESSLY convert their complex PDF files (done by a professional marketing firm in the States) into Word - pictures, columns -everything. I insert my Canadian content and then reconvert the Word document back into a PDF file using Acrobat. It's a perfect solution and has saved me countless hours of formatting aggravation. This software paid for itself within minutes of my first using it on a PDF brochure. No one would know that I did not use Adobe InDesign (the software used by the originators of the PDF brochure) to create the Canadian version of the brochure. One caveat - you need to have the same fonts on your system as the ones found inside the PDF document, otherwise the software will convert to the "closest" font. I spent almost 600 dollars Cdn. at Staples to buy Adobe Acrobat - if I had known today what I now know, I would of purchased the Scansoft Pro version (which converts the documents back into PDF) - assuming of course that the Word-PDF function works as well as the PDF-Word function in Converter. One last comment - I have NO connection with Scansoft - I read the reviews of the software from PC magazines before making my decision. I wrote this review because I felt that it was important to offer a counterweight to some of the comments in the other reviews found here.


Don't throw your money away on this product   July 20, 2004
The activation process for this product ties hardware configuration to the serial number. Then if you upgrade your hardware, you can not re-install this product on a new configuration (even after uninstalling from older hardware). Then try to get a hold of Scansoft, $19.95/phone call and $9.95/e-mail. Poor product performance and poor product support.


Bogus technical support   July 3, 2004
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Technical support is HORRIBLE. They want to charge me $9.95 to just tell them about a "glitch" in their software....incredible.

This is a decent product for the money. It is not perfect and sometimes converting documents it does not always come through perfectly. I can live with that.

What bugs me is that there is a glitch with this software and how the plug-in works with Outlook. On the second start of Outlook the plug-in buttons for this - and my other plug-ins are gone! I uninstall this program and everything re-appears and works just fine. The issue is with this software.

In reality it is no big deal right? I just tell the company and they work on a fix....however, just for the right to tell them I have to pay $9.95 for that. What a crock..

Is this what Scansoft is all about? They cannot even take user feedback on the issue without a charge? You'd think Scansoft would want to make its product even better and fix the glitches.....but I am not paying $9.95 to tell them about their error. Really stupid Scansoft.


This product is HORRIBLE!! Don't Buy It!!   July 3, 2004
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I tried using this product on some PDFs and it just would NOT convert them properly! I called tech support and they said sometimes it doesn't work too well why don't you buy our more expensive Omnipage product. They would not return my product nor give me free tech support with this product. After charging me $20.00 per incident on tech support they were unable to resolve my problem. They just said well "It does not work sometimes, buy our Omnipage product instead". Horrible customer service over there. ScanSoft truly exemplifies poor customer service.


Finally a way to break free from PDF hell   June 30, 2004
k smith (Fairfax.VA)
This product is really great.period. I hated working with PDFs because Acrobat Reader didn't allow me to do anything with the file. Adobe is pretty smart giving away Reader to promote the technology, but stupid for trying to rape you if you want to buy a full version of the product. ScanSoft's product works really well for me and is reasonably priced. Adobe is in trouble...