Able2Extract 5.0 Professional
Reviewed: Geetesh Bajaj
Date Created: August 26th 2008
Last Updated: February 21st 2009
Introduction
About Able2Extract
Download and Installation
Using Able2Extract
Pricing and Support
Conclusion
Introduction
How many times have you converted your PowerPoint, Word, or Excel document to a PDF and have lost the original -- or maybe you created the PDF from a non-Microsoft Office source but now need it as a PowerPoint presentation. Or maybe you were sent a PDF and are expected to create an exact Word document from it, right down to the spacing, layout, and fonts.
Able2Extract, our review product lets you transfer native PDFs to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
Back
About Able2Extract
Able2Extract is from Investintech.com Inc, a software development company based in Toronto, Canada. You can learn more about of Able2extract and download the trial version from their site...
There are two version on Able2Extract, Standard and Professional -- for this review I am using the Professional version. Read the comparison between the Standard and Pro versions of Able2Extract at their site.
My contact at Investintech.com for this review was Keith Bradbury, thank you Keith.
Download and Installation
Download the installer from the link given above, run the setup routine
and follow the instructions. You'll end up with an Able2Extract program
group in your Windows Start menu (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1: Able2Extract Start menu group
Using Able2Extract
Follow these steps to convert a PDF file to a PowerPoint presentation:
- Go to your Windows Start menu and choose All Programs | Able2Extract
| Able2Extract Professional (see Figure 1 above).
- This launches the Able2Extract interface as shown in Figure
2. Choose the Open Document option from
the tool bar.
Figure 2: Open PDF File
- This summons the dialog box that you can see in Figure 3 -- navigate
and select a PDF that you want to convert, and click Open.
Figure 3: Open a PDF
- This opens the PDF file within the Able2Extract interface. You now
need to select the data in your PDF prior to converting. There are two
selection options available:
- Mouse Based Selection: Left click your cursor beginning at the
position from which you want to select text. Click-drag the cursor
over the content you want to select.
- Selection Menu Options: Choose Edit from menu to get various
select options as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Select options
Select Page Range: Use this to select certain pages of the document.
Selects All Pages: This option selects all the pages in the document.
Selects All on Page: Use this option to select all the content on the active page.
- Mouse Based Selection: Left click your cursor beginning at the
position from which you want to select text. Click-drag the cursor
over the content you want to select.
- Once you have made a selection, choose File | Convert to PowerPoint,
as shown in Figure 5, and provide an output file name
and location when prompted.
Figure 5: Convert to PowerPoint
- This will start the conversion process. The process can take a while based on the complexity and size of the original PDF.
The resulting PowerPoint slides from our test PDF looked just like the original pages -- but none of the headlines or bulleted text converted to text placeholders that you can normally find within PowerPoint's outline pane. In fact, multiple bullets converted into individual text boxes. Also pictures within slides did not convert to individual pictures -- instead we ended up with flat slide backgrounds that included the pictures. The result was thus more of look over PowerPoint best practices -- but it's still an amazing feat.
Pricing and Support
Able2Extract Professional is only available as a 30 day subscription license that costs $34.95 -- the full version costs 129.95 for a single-user license (download only). Multiple user licenses are available.
Support is by e-mail and phone.
Conclusion
Able2Extract is a capable product that can help you if you need to create all sorts of Microsoft Office documents from PDFs of all sorts.
