Wondershare PDFelement 6.3

From creating a new PDF file from scratch to edit an existing one, and from scanning a document to an editable PDF to combining or converting them in batches, Wondershare PDFelement is an all-in-one PDF editor that offers nearly the same functionality you will find in Adobe Acrobat DC but for a fraction of the cost.

To make the editing tasks even more comfortable, the program’s interface faithfully resembles the latest look-and-feel of the new Microsoft Office suite of products. Before getting to the main interface, though, the program opens an initial window that works as the main menu for the most common tasks – edit, convert, combine, and create PDF, together with PDF templates for new PDF files and a batch processes menu, where you can convert, extract data, add Bates numbering, and watermark all your PDF files at once.

The conversion processes are limited mainly to Office formats, EPUB, and a set of the most popular image file types. When it comes to combining PDF files, you can set optional custom page ranges for all or some of the PDFs on the list, so that you can create one single PDF file with only those sections you are interested in. Create PDF here refers to converting Office and other types of documents into PDF in a straightforward way. In order to create new PDF files from scratch, you will need to move to the editing interface and choose “New” from the file menu or make use of one of the templates provided. Alternatively, you can use your scanner to convert paper documents into image-based or editable PDF files, thanks to its OCR capabilities.

As expected, it is when you decide to edit an existing PDF file that things get more complicated. Because PDF files were never meant to be edited, the way content is stored internally has very little to do with the way Office or any other text-based editors do it. If all you need to do is adding a letter or changing a word for another one, things may go more or less smoothly – if you intend to add a whole new paragraph or change an existing one, though, and you expect the page (and all its related elements, such as footnotes) to reflow and adjust to the new situation, you may encounter some serious difficulties to achieve that. PDFelement has all the tools to perform all of these editing tasks in the simplest and more efficient way, but you will need to overcome a number of serious limitations inherent to the PDF standard. Limitations that not even Adobe Acrobat DC is able to overcome.

Because words are not words for PDF, and lines and paragraphs are concepts that are almost alien to its nature, I wouldn’t blame Wondershare PDFelement of the mixed results that its editing features produce, but the truth is that – despite its Office-like appearance – editing a PDF file and expect to get the same results we do when editing a Word file is simply not possible. Having said that, this nicely-designed PDF editor is nearly as powerful as Adobe’s editor, and trying and using its many features will cost you much less.