PDF files can be a real pain if you want to take information from them and don't have Adobe Reader. Able2Extract is an application designed to make it easy to deal with.

The main selling point is that the user will be able to extract to Microsoft Word and Excel files - and other formats - with as much formatting and tables etc. intact as possible.

This trial version lets you convert up to three pages at a time to whatever format you choose. The interface is really nicely designed, and won't cause anyone problems. Converting files from PDF could hardly be easier. Highlight what you want to convert and click convert.

For text PDFs the conversion quality is generally fantastic; we didn't notice any errors. When dealing with things like charts and graphs, Able2Extract isn't quite as good, although it deals with tables well if you convert to Excel format.

One criticism of Able2Extract is that many browsers can now handle PDF files directly, and also allow you to highlight the content, so you can copy/paste into other applications. PDF files are not as inaccessible as they used to be. Nevertheless, Able2Extract does the job very quickly.