Technology Bites recently brought my attention to two different online PDF creation tools: PrimoOnline and Acrobat.com.  To choose between them I took them for a quick test drive.

Acrobat.com is by far the more appealing site of the two.  The site usability is as polished as you would expect from an Adobe product, despite its beta status.  It also provides storage space for your documents and the ability to share them with others.  Its achilles heel would appear to be the 5 PDF conversion limit quoted in both the Technology Bites post and the Acrobat.com user guide.  Whether by accident or design this limit is not enforced at this time.  During testing I converted 6 documents in 15 minutes with no issues.

By comparison the PrimoOnline interface is spartan but functional.  It provides a basic web form to specify the file to convert and the email address to send it to, and quickly sends the result to your inbox.  Its claim to fame is having 300 formats it can convert into PDF.  Upon reviewing the list most would be readable by MS Office applications so I’m not sure how useful this will be for most people in practice.

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, as they say.  I ran the same test document through both services (Acrobat.com output and PrimoOnline output) and here are my observations about the results:

• PrimoOnline does not honour the fonts used in the source document.  If you compare the test documents you will find that Acrobat.com’s output is near identical to the input document, while PrimoOnline has substituted fonts and looks noticeably different.
• As expected neither service coped with the Enhanced MetaFile (EMF) included in the document.  For some reason the most space efficient way to copy Visio objects into Word documents is also the most difficult to convert into PDF form.  The Device Independent Bitmap version of the diagram converted successfully on both services and demonstrates how the EMF version should have looked.
• Acrobat.com consistently output smaller files than PrimoOnline.  It was also the only service to include a Bookmarks list, though both services do generate clickable hyperlinks in their output.  This feature is one of the main advantages these services have over a PDF printer based solution.

Based upon the test results Acrobat.com is a clear winner, provided that Adobe continue to ignore (or remove) their quoted 5 conversion limit.  Given its difficulties maintaining document formatting I’d find it hard to recommend PrimoOnline unless you were purely looking for a universal document converter so aesthetics were less critical.

Via Technology Bites

Martin over at gHacks recently posted about Microsoft’s Office 2007 plugin that saves documents as PDF:

Microsoft is offering a plugin on their homepage that adds pdf support to Office 2007 adding PDF as one of the options in the Save As dialog. That’s probably the most effective way to add support for PDF documents to Microsoft Office 2007.

I’ve been using this plugin with OneNote 2007 for some time now and thought I’d share some experiences with the product.

When using the Save As PDF function the Options button will call up the following dialog box:

Most of the options are similar to those you would get when using a virtual printer to create a PDF document.  The most significant difference is the "Create bookmarks using" option.  Creating active bookmarks (hyperlinks) within a PDF is the most compelling reason for using this plugin over a virtual printer solution.  By default the plugin will embed working links (e.g. a Word document’s table of contents will be interactive), with the "Create bookmarks using" option allowing you to extend the link support to make all headings visible in the Acrobat Reader’s Bookmarks navigation pane as well.  This link creation is something no virtual printer solution I’m aware of is capable of doing, and Adobe’s Office plugin is the only other tool I’ve used that can create working bookmarks in converted Office documents.

Unfortunately I have encountered one significant issue with the plugin.  I usually do my diagramming in Visio then copy the results into Word using Paste As Special (EMF).  This keeps the Word file size down without visually impacting the diagram on screen or paper.  When I skimmed through the PDF conversion of one Word document I noticed this in one of the embedded pictures:

The same diagram looked like this in the original document and after conversion to PDF via a virtual printer:

Obviously the plugin doesn’t work well with gradients in EMF diagrams.  I’ve yet to find an option to overcome this or a workaround that keeps Word document size down and diagrams accurate in the conversion output.

For documents that don’t include diagrams with gradients, Microsoft’s PDF plugin is my preferred way to convert documents to PDF.  For all other documents virtual printing (or Adobe’s commercial plugin) will still be the only way to give acceptable conversion results.

Have you ever tried to determine the changes between two versions of a spreadsheet, only to be thwarted by the comparison feature in your Office Suite?  My encounters with Microsoft Office versions 95 through to 2007 certainly have had mixed results.  While Microsoft Word’s capabilities are generally OK, the comparison features in the rest of the suite (assuming one is provided at all) have not been able to meet my requirements.  Thankfully we don’t need to rely upon these any longer.

WinMerge is an Open Source application best known for its ability to compare and merge text files and directories.  What is not so well known is it can compare Office files as well. 

Basic Office Document Support (Word/Excel Only)

If you only require the ability to compare Excel or Word files:

1. Download the WinMerge installer and begin the install
2. When you reach the "Installation Type" dialog, select the Plugins entry in component list
3. When prompted ensure the "Enable Explorer context menu integration" option is selected
4. Finish the installation

If you have Microsoft Office installed on your system, you are now able to compare Excel spreadsheets or Word documents using WinMerge.  Simply select two documents in Windows Explorer, right click on them, and select the WinMerge item on the context menu.  An example of the comparison between two spreadsheets is included below.

Extended Office Document Support (Various Office Document Types and Suites)

If your Office document comparison requirements are a little more sophisticated, or you don’t have Microsoft Office installed on your system, it is fairly easy to add support for the following document types:

These capabilities are added by the freely available xdocdiff WinMerge Plugin.  To install (with thanks to the xdocdiff WinMerge Plugin homepage):

1. Follow the "Basic Office Document Support" steps above
2. Run WinMerge
3. Select the "Automatic Unpacking" option from the "Plugins" menu
4. Close WinMerge
5. Download the xdocdiff WinMerge Plugin
6. Unzip the file
7. Copy xdoc2txt.exe and zlib.dll to the WinMerge program folder. (Where WinMerge.exe is located. Default: "C:\Program Files\WinMerge")
8. Copy amb_xdocdiffPlugin.dll to the "MergePlugins" sub folder in the WinMerge program folder

The usage steps are the same as before: select two documents in Windows Explorer, right click on them, and select the WinMerge item on the context menu.  An example of the comparison between two spreadsheets is included below.  You will noticed that this plugin does not support comparison of document properties (a feature included in the builtin Excel functionality) but I believe that is a small price to pay for the additional document support.

So next time you need to compare two Office documents don’t go hunting around your Office suite’s menus – WinMerge them!