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There are several well-regarded, free ways to take advantage of the Print function to transform just about any file to a PDF. PrimoPDF and doPDF sit at the top of the list, but what about reverse engineering that conversion? Converting in the other direction, from a PDF to a Microsoft Word-compatible format like DOC or RTF is trickier.

For one thing, there's a lot of crap out there. Many PDF-to-DOC converters have similar or even identical names, differentiated sometimes by nothing more than a cunning tap of the space bar. Many offer features that are hamstrung in various ways … Read more

Advanced PDF to Word Converter Free doesn't start off well, but, surprisingly, leaves you with a nearly-perfect document. When you install the program, it will ask you to reboot. While rebooting makes sense for programs that have deep hooks into your operating system, it strikes warning bells in such a simple converter. However, the final DOC output from this PDF to Word format converter looks pretty good, albeit with some image quality degradation and minor text alignment problems.

The program sports drag-and-drop additions, adding an entire folder or individual PDFs from different folders and custom output folders, and output … Read more

Google has added a basic drawing ability to Google Docs, letting people add graphical elements such as org charts or diagrams to their online word-processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

You shouldn't expect to be able to crowdsource your online document into something fit for the Guggenheim, but the feature does offer several useful illustration tools that can be used within Google Docs' multi-author collaborative framework.

Among them: a variety of shapes, arrows, and lines, a free-form curve tool, and text boxes. You can change border and fill colors, add text to various shapes, and rotate and resize them. You … Read more

It's that time of year again: days are getting longer, the weather's warming up (a bit), and 65 college basketball teams are hoping to be the last ones standing when the buzzer sounds, ending the last of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament's 64 games.

For last year's March Madness, I created a version of the tournament brackets on Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and invited readers to download it to make and share their picks. This year's version of the brackets spreadsheet includes a form you can use to make your picks and post them … Read more

Google discovered a privacy glitch that inappropriately shared access to a small fraction of word-processing and presentation documents stored on the company's online Google Docs service.

"We've identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document," the company said in a note, quoted at TechCrunch, that the search giant sent to affected people. "The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing … Read more

A recent Google Docs Blog post details enhancements made to the Google Docs site that bring spreadsheet editing to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Users had previously been able to only view spreadsheets.

According to the blog post:

"Today, I'm happy to announce that we've made mobile access even better by adding new capabilities with List View for spreadsheets. You can quickly view, edit, sort, and filter your spreadsheets on a variety of mobile devices including Android-powered devices like the T-Mobile G1, the iPhone and iPod touch, and the Nokia S60."

This new feature is even … Read more

Google Docs has a new validation option that spreadsheet jockeys are going to appreciate. You can now give cells prerequisites, so that you or other users must fill them in with a certain type of data. It can also be set up to provide instructions that pop up as soon as someone starts entering data--similar to what's available in Google Docs' form tool and in Microsoft Excel. Both options can be set inside of the data validator that shows up once you've selected a cell or range of cells.

The Google Docs blog has suggested this as a … Read more

More than a decade ago, Microsoft won the office productivity suite war against WordPerfect, and arguably, Office has seen little innovation since.

Just as Mozilla Chairman Mitchell Baker has argued in the browser market--namely, that once Microsoft had beat out browser competitors, it failed to innovate for years--so, too, has Microsoft rested on its Office laurels for far too long.

Enter DocVerse, a stealth San Francisco start-up created by two former Microsoft employees that aims to make Microsoft Office operate more like Google Docs, as reported by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. DocVerse provides a 1MB plug-in to Office 2007 that … Read more

doPDF is a fairly basic program that's utterly bereft of features beyond its main function: to let users create PDF documents from within any program using the native Print option. Along with whatever printer you've got hooked up that shows up in the Print dialog box, doPDF adds an eponymous option. Select it, hit print, and you get the chance to change the name of the PDF you're creating. Hit enter and the PDF gets created, then automatically opens for you to proofread it.

Lacking any customization features and the control panel to manage them, doPDF is … Read more