PDF-XChange Pro

About this release

PDF-XChange Pro is the full bundle from a company whose whole reputation is being fast and light where the big name PDF suite is slow and heavy. It brings together three parts, the Editor for viewing, marking up and editing documents, a virtual printer that turns anything printable into a PDF from any application, and a page tools engine for the batch operations that act on files without opening each one. Together they cover most of what an office does with PDFs.

The Editor is the centrepiece and it does real work on a document. Edit text and images in place, add and fill form fields, stamp, highlight and comment for review, insert, delete, rotate and reorder pages, and run OCR over a scan so it becomes searchable and selectable text. Export back out to Word, Excel and image formats keeps the structure rather than flattening everything, and the whole thing opens and scrolls quickly even on a large document.

The virtual printer is the quiet workhorse, since it makes a PDF from any program that can print, with control over the output size, compression and security. This is the professional bundle, which unlocks the editing, OCR, conversion and the printer's full options that the free reader holds back, prepared here to install in an activated state and set up without a connection.

What it does

• Edit text and images directly inside an existing PDF
• Virtual printer that makes a PDF from any application
• OCR that turns a scan into searchable, selectable text
• Form field creation and filling with validation
• Markup with stamps, highlights, notes and drawing tools
• Page operations to insert, delete, rotate, reorder and combine
• Export to Word, Excel and image formats with structure kept
• Batch page tools that act on files without opening each one
• Password and permission controls with encryption
• Fast rendering that stays quick on large documents

Changes in this version

• Faster OCR pass on long scanned documents
• Improved text editing accuracy on subset embedded fonts
• Reworked export to Word with better table detection
• Better performance opening very large PDFs
• Updated the virtual printer for current Windows builds

What the package contains

• PDF-XChange Pro full offline installer covering all three components
• OCR language packs
• Office add-in for creating PDFs from Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• All interface languages
• Readme with the install order written out step by step

Installation notes

Follow these in order. Most reports of a failed install come from skipping a step rather than from the package itself.

1. Disconnect from the network before you start.
2. Extract the archive to a short path such as C:\Setup.
3. Run setup as administrator and choose the full component set.
4. Apply the included activation step, then launch once and close it.
5. Confirm the virtual printer appears in your printers list.
6. Reconnect to the network.

System requirements

Things worth knowing

• Install the full component set so the virtual printer and page tools are present, not just the Editor.
• The Office add-in only registers if Office was installed first.
• Turn off the update check if you want the activation state left exactly as it is.

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Listing information

This entry is catalogued under Office & Productivity and carries the tags below. Language coverage is Multilingual, 30 interface languages, and the supported platform list is Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11. Version 11.0.1 is the current catalogued build, last checked 6 days ago, and the entry has been in the index since it was added 2 years ago.