Small Business IT Support Service

Don’t buy Adobe Acrobat (get Nitro Reader for free!)December 14th, 2011 by brianl

When clients ask, how do I merge two PDFs together? Or how do I type in scanned forms?  I tell them to purchase Adobe Acrobat for $260.

WHAT?! How much???

I cringe every time I tell clients just how ridiculously expensive the full version of Adobe Acrobat is. So I went on a search for a free alternative and found Nitro Reader. Read more for details.


Nitro Reader

http://www.nitropdf.com/reader



Nitro Reader performs all the basics found in the paid version of Acrobat:

  • - Create PDFs
  • - Merge PDFs*
  • - Delete pages*
    • *Requires a trick.  I will show you how below.
  • - Type in non-fillable forms
  • - Add notes
  • - Add signature (this one is my favorite)

Upgrade to Pro for $120 if you need to:

  • - Alter text on an existing PDFs (usually for naughty reasons)
  • - Speed up Merging/Deleting pages

I will go over each of the features in the order of difficulty.

1. Type in non-fillable forms

You know how you can type in some PDF forms, but not others?  Annoying!

Use the Type Text tool in Nitro to type anywhere on any PDF.

Just click the button, then click where you want to type, then type away!

2. Add notes

When you are reviewing forms with a colleague, it’s sometimes helpful to add notes to it.  Click on the Add Note button and click where you want to add the note.


3. Add signature

This is by far my favorite.  It totally saves time by letting you stamp the document with a scanned copy of your signature (as opposed to printing, signing, then scanning/faxing)

First, take a blank paper and sign your name.  Scan the signature and save it as an image file (e.g. jpg or png)

When you click on the QuickSign button for the first time, you will be prompted to select the file you want to use as your signature.  Choose the file you saved in the previous step.

Now you will be able to stamp your signature anywhere on the PDF by clicking on QuickSign

4. Creating PDFs

Installing Nitro Reader will automatically add a “Nitro PDF Creator” printer.  You can convert any document in to a PDF by printing to it.  When you print, you will be prompted to save the file in PDF.  Select the destination (e.g. Desktop) and you’re done!

5. Delete Pages

There is no menu option to delete pages in Nitro Reader.  Instead, you use a trick with the “Nitro PDF Creator” printer. Instead of deleting the pages you don’t want, you only print the pages you do want to a new PDF.

For example, say one.pdf has 10 pages, and you want to delete page 6.  Print to a new file named two.pdf, and selecting only the pages 1-5, 7-10 in the print options.

6. Merge PDF

To merge pages, again you use a trick with the “Nitro PDF Creator” printer.

For example, say you want to merge two files:

one.pdf
two.pdf

Open two.pdf, then print to “Nitro PDF Creator” printer.  When prompted where you want to save the file, select one.pdf as the destination.  Normally this would overwrite the file.  However, you will be prompted with the following:

By selecting Append, you will be able to merge two.pdf in to one.pdf.  You can also control whether two.pdf goes before or after one.pdf by clicking on the small downward arrow and selecting the option as shown above.  You can repeat this process to merge multiple documents.

I know this is a bit confusing, but you will get the hang of it after a few tries.  But if it’s just too complicated, you can upgrade to the Pro version for $120 and get Merge/Delete pages as a simple menu option.

So there you have it.  Hope you enjoyed theses tips.  Now go save yourself $260 and download Nitro for free!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 9:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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