The free applications reviewed in this section are helpful for their specific functions mostly not covered by the General Tools. Sun PDF Import Extension to OpenOffice.org allows PDF documents imported in Draw to preserve layout and edit small portion of text. This extension works further to allow you to import and modify PDF documents in OpenOffice from a PDF/ODF hybrid file with 100% layout accuracy. The hybrid pdf file is a pdf file containing an embedded odf source file. It can be viewed with a normal pdf viewer and can be opened with OpenOffice for full editing. See A PDF File Allows Editing in 100% Layout Accuracy for details.  Some PDF to TXT Converter is a light tool which preserves text and layout, supports for drag and drop, batch conversion, and encrypted pdf files. Alternatively, try the latest version of Nitro PDF Reader which gives you an option to either keep text in paragraphs so it's easier for re-alignment, or break each line to a width of certain number of characters at your choice. FreeOCR.net is a scan and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program and good for extracting text from scanned PDF documents. Moreover, images from scanned PDF documents can be selected and placed on the clipboard. Try also Free-OCR.com for an online OCR solution.  Some PDF to Word Converter allows removing line breaks and preserves paragraphs with soft returns. It supports batch conversion and encrypted pdf files, keeps images but does not preserve hyperlinks for the version under review.  7-PDF Maker is a powerful tool to convert a wide range of formats to PDF. It is not ony able to convert files generated by Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OpenOffice, StarOffice, Maths and AutoCad, but also convert images, text or web based files to PDF. The setup comes with a Command line version or a Windows Explorer integration and the program supports user interface both in English and German even though the website is currently only available in German. If you are using office applications such as OpenOffice and Jarte, they come with a feature to export files to PDF. Microsoft Office 2007 also allows a free add-in for saving documents as PDF. Using either 7-PDF Maker or the above office applications, clickable hyperlinks or bookmarks together with page layouts are nicely preserved in the converted or exported PDF files. Alternatively you may install a virtual PDF printer, such as Bullzip, to create a PDF file by printing text or other contents via the PDF printer. However by doing so, clickable hyperlinks and bookmarks are usually not preserved in the resulting PDF file.  If you are only converting various image files to PDF, my favorite goes to i2pdf. It works even better than the tool "Convert Images to PDF" included in PDFill PDF Tools. Download and unzip i2pdf, run the executable directly and no installation is required. This program is portable and user friendly -- just drag and drop the images on the program window, click "Build PDF" button and it's done. In setting the page output, "paperless" format is helpful for converting portrait and landscape images to the PDF file and view it on the screen without blank paper margins. Some PDF Images Extract is a good choice. You can extract all images from several PDF files by batch or pull images from selected pages in a PDF file. Images can be saved in jpg, bmp, png, tiff, gif or tga formats.  PDF-XChange Viewer supports annotating PDF documents and allows for highlighting, crossing or underlining text; drawing shapes; stamping and filling up PDF forms with a built-in typewriter. It is surprisingly more than a viewer! For Linux users, Okular is a good choice. It allows for annotations, highlighting, drawing lines and shapes, adding textboxes and stamps, selecting and saving a part of documents as text or in an image format. PDFescape is a helpful web application which lets you create a PDF form online. Right from your browser, you can fill up a PDF form or create a fillable PDF form easily. You can also add text, links and sticky notes, whiteout contents and draw basic shapes. Free account users are limited to a maximum file size of 2 MB or 50 pages per file. BeCyPDFMetaEdit is a good find. It allows editing most metadata, customizing viewer preferences, slide show, page labels, etc. Tweak PDF is another choice with a simple user interface but without slideshow setting and some other features. Try PDFCrak which runs on Linux or DOS (the version for DOS is available for download here). The only supported usage of this software is to recover passwords and/or content that you own but have lost access to as stated in the FAQ. | 
