WonderShare PDFelement Full Review and Alternatives

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WonderShare PDFelement

4.2/5

Overview

PDFelement, a Wondershare craft, is a fully-fledged PDF software with a collection of tools or elements aimed at the comprehensive manipulation of PDF documents. It is recognized as a very good value alternative to Adobe’s Acrobat, considering it even has extra features in store for you.

With it, you can create, sign, convert, edit, mark up, draw, create forms, reorder PDF pages, among other options. PDFelement is also pretty accommodating too considering that it can be used on Windows or Mac without any form of limitations. You will also love the way features are delivered at your disposal – all tools or components are available on a single program making it way convenient to work with.

This review article takes you through the various highlight features of PDFelement so that you are sufficiently aware of what to expect. Without further ado, let’s dig in, but first, here are some of the PDFelement pros and cons;

Pros & Cons of Wondershare PDFelement

Pros
  • Built-in OCR
  • Multi-platform
  • Flexible pricing
  • Offers batch processing
  • Simple and straightforward
  • Allows form filling
  • A ton of PDF editing options
  • Offers PDF compression and optimization
Cons
  • OCR feature is exclusive to the paid version
  • Watermark in the free version

How to Use Wondershare PDFelement

Key Features in Wondershare PDFelement

With persistent evolving and keeping up with the latest advancements in the PDF industry, PDFelement has remained relevant and very popular among users. In fact, every new version is more refined than the previous one and may bring even new features. Here are the keys features you are bound to make the most out of;

Convert to and from PDFs

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PDFelement provides a nifty way to convert to and from the PDF format. The dedicated “Convert PDF” mode lets you convert native, scanned, or image-based PDFs into other formats like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Epub, JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, TXT, RTF, HTML, XML, PDF/A, and more. The process is pretty straightforward and does not require you to tinker with anything except adding the PDF file for conversion.

Also, you have the “Create PDF” mode that allows you to transform other document files into PDF format in just a matter of moments. And even before you can save the converted file, you are opened up to an editor just in case there are refinements and necessary edits required.

More on the editing options later. The good thing is that the process is fast, with automatic OCR and high-quality output overall. With shell integration and support for the Microsoft Office plugin, direct document conversion becomes possible.

OCR PDFs

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While processing native PDFs is usually easy, scanned or image-based PDFs can prove to be very painstaking to work on. That is why PDFelement brings you a built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool to help you extract the data you need. The OCR is automatically applied when converting PDFs although you still get a dedicated mode that lets you tweak the OCR processing in specifics like the recognition language, scan options, and the pages to OCR. To be specific, you can OCR a PDF into just editable text or scan to searchable text from images.

In regard to the pages, you can choose to extract data from all the pages, the current page on an opened PDF, a page range, or even a selected area. PDFelement has ensured to include almost all the popular languages including likes of English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, and more. Through the OCR, you never need to retype any scanned content.

However, OCR is fully functional in the PDFelement Pro version, and therefore is advisable to consider purchasing the professional version to avoid limitations.

Split, Reorder, and Delete PDF Pages

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This is a mode dedicated to giving you the necessary tools to manipulate PDF pages. To be specific, you get to rotate, delete, extract, insert, split, and replace PDF pages to suit the goal at hand. When the need arises, you have the option to crop and apply page labels to realize a proper PDF document organization. All these tools are geared towards you outputting just the content you need from a multipage PDF document.

Combine/Merge PDFs

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When you have two or more PDF documents that you need to form a single document, PDFelement has the “Combine PDF” tool at your disposal. While you can combine the entire PDFs, you are also given the choice to just combine specific pages or page ranges from each individual PDF.

This way, you can avoid the need to merge all pages when and just extract the specific content you need. Depending on the kind of arrangement you want, you are allowed to rearrange documents, add more, and even delete others as you see fit.

Better yet, PDFelement also gives you the option to generate a new catalog from the bookmarks in the added files, not forgetting the total control over where the output is saved.

Edit PDFs

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PDFelement also goes the extra mile to let you tweak PDFs by providing various editing options. The editing process can involve a variety of tasks like changing images, text, adjusting pages, and this software has revolutionized how you tinker with PDF documents for an overly convenient process. Here are the various editing options that are at your disposal;

  • Adding/Deleting text
  • Adding images
  • Linking a PDF page, a web page, or a file
  • Adding/editing watermarks
  • Adding/editing a PDF background
  • Adding/editing page headers and footers
  • Adding/editing Bates Number
  • Cropping
  • Annotating (highlighting, adding shapes/text/callout/stamp)

Through these options, you can always be assured of a refined output that also passes the intended information sufficiently. Editing PDFs is not a feature you get to enjoy with many PDF converters out there but PDFelement has got you covered in relation to this.

Optimize PDFs

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By optimizing PDFs, we are simpling compressing them into manageable sizes depending on the goal at hand. For instance, you may be required to upload a PDF file but find that the file size is way past the stipulated upload limit.

To bridge this gap, there is a need to optimize the PDF file so that it fits the required size and still keeps the content intact. PDFelement gives you the “Optimize PDF” tool that delivers 3 modes. The first mode is “High” which has the greatest levels of PDF compression with the downside being great loss in quality.

The “Medium” compression mode strikes a good balance between the file size and the quality while the “Low” mode applies very little compression to the PDF file and therefore delivers a very high-quality PDF file. When the optimization is done, you will be notified of how much compression has been done both in size and percentage.

Batch Processing

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PDFelement also offers a dedicated batch processing mode that goes a long way to expedite your workflow. Basically, it lets you work on multiple PDF documents all at the same time. For instance, instead of converting or optimizing PDFs one after the other, you get to apply the action to all the files at once and wait for the output. This way, you get to save a ton of time and effort considering that you have the luxury of the much-coveted drag-and-drop feature. The various modes that you can apply batch processing include;

  • Converting PDFs
  • Creating PDFs
  • Optimizing PDFs
  • OCR
  • Adding Bates numbering
  • Adding watermark
  • Securing PDFs
  • Extracting data
  • Printing PDFs

Protect PDFs

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When you are sharing documents, it is always prudent to take greater caution especially if they carry sensitive information. This is one of the reasons that motivate PDFelement to avail document protection options at your disposal.

To be specific, you can protect documents with passwords, search and redact sensitive information, sign and validate signatures, and apply electronic signatures where necessary. Through the use of signatures, verifying the authenticity of a document becomes easy. Other protection options let you restrict editing or printing of the PDF document, not forgetting the various encryption levels you are opened up to.

Wondershare PDFelement Pricing

PDFelement is considerate enough to give you a free trial period so that you can have an experience of the features before making up your mind to purchase the professional version. The table below breaks down the various pricing plans you can choose from

 

Consumer

Price/Plan

 

 

PDFelement Standard

 

Individual

$69/Year

$79 One-time

Student

$34.50/Year

$59.50 One-time

 

 

 

 

PDFelement Pro

Individual

$79/Year

$49/Half-Year

$129 One-time

Team (No. of users)

From $109/Year

From $139 One-time

Student

$64.50/Year

$99.50 One-time

PDFelement Business

20+ Users

Custom (Contact sales)

Apart from these pricing plans, PDFelement also presents you with various bundles concomitant to the Pro version in case you want to save some more money. The good thing with this pricing is its versatility which in turn gives you options like whether to go for a subscription or perpetual license plan in order to fit your budget.

Conclusion

PDFelement is the most comprehensive PDF software that has all the necessary tools under the same roof. It can be used in all settings including personal, business, academic, among others to deliver exemplary results when working on PDF files. All tasks involving the conversion, creation, editing, optimization, merging, splitting, OCR, and protection of PDFs can be accomplished without much hassle.

Even better, you can fill out forms and get access to a fully-fledged batch processing feature to see to it that your tasks take way less time than when processing one PDF file after the other. Certainly, a worthy rival to Adobe’s Acrobat, both in features and pricing.

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