Good Friday afternoon! Today’s tip is going to have you slicing and dicing through work documents like a brand new set of Ginsu Knives. Our first tool is PDF to Word from NitroPDF. It’s a free service which converts your PDFs to either .DOC format or .RTF so they can be opened and edited in Microsoft Word. No muss, no fuss! Reviews on the web indicate that the conversions are fairly accurate but not flawless. Nevertheless having access to a Word version of a PDF is not an unusual occurrence for me. They don’t really indicate what’s happening behind the scenes (garden gnomes with scanners) but here’s their full set of features. I also reviewed their privacy policy due to the sometimes confidential nature of certain documents and was pleasantly surprised to find a very streamlined plan:
Your files
- The PDF files you upload for conversion are deleted straight after being converted.
- The DOC/RTF files we generate are deleted immediately after we email you them.
- At no stage are your files looked at or touched by the administrator of our PDF-to-Word service.
Your email address
- The email address you use to receive your converted files will never be used to send you unsolicited emails or sold off.
Along with PDF to Word, their site offers a number of other tools including:
- PrimoPDF – A free download allowing you to create PDFs on your desktop.
- PrimoOnline – An online version of the above.
- PDFHammer – An online PDF editor.
There are certainly a lot of PDF tools available elsewhere on the web, but I think you’ll find the simplicity of these services appealing.
Feature #2
Today’s second item is OutlookViewAttach, a nifty little application that scans all your mail in Outlook for messages with attachments. There are numerous ways to organize and arrange the results, batch download the attachments, and a search feature allowing you track down missing documents. If you plan to download OutlookViewAttach, here are a couple of tips:
- If you have a lot of mail stored in Outlook (let’s be real, we all do) expect the scan process to take several minutes. As a tip you can export the scan reults as an Excel file for quick review later.
- You may see a lot of “attachments” that are actually vCard files from yourself, people who have sent you mail, or mailing lists.
- Be prepared to organize and arrange the results in order to get the most out of this application!
Bonus Tip!
There has been a lot of web browser activity lately, especially with Google entering the market with Google Chrome. Internet Explorer 8 is also set to debut with Windows 7, and Safari 4 Beta for Mac was released last week. Mozilla is also planning to release the next version of Firefox: Firefox 3.1 which is now in beta 3 status (close to release). If you’re interested in being on the cutting edge of browser technology you may want to give it a try. 3.1 promises to handle complex websites and code much faster than previous versions. If you’re going to try Firefox 3.1 beta, I’ll reiterate what their site says:
This is pre-release software: you may encounter compatibility problems with some websites and add-ons.
With that word of caution, happy browsing and enjoy your weekend!