Microsoft Publisher vs. PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor

Microsoft Publisher is well suited for almost any situation. It is something that I'm sure has far more advanced tools than I use or am aware of, but it is also very simple for entry-level users to create professional documents quickly. I have used it for very involved brochures in real estate scenarios and I have also used it for very simple "Construction Zone" signs at a job site under construction. There are so many uses for this program!

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This software handles large PDF files and has not crashed for me, unlike some other PDF software. It does what I need very well, although it has a lot of features beyond what I need. It extracts and adds documents easily and certainly does well with its search function after applying optical character recognition.

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• Design of my quarterly full color magazine: (usually 28-56 pages in length)
• Design of the quarterly planning system used by me and others in the annual conference.
• Design and layout of any document that requires graphics/photos.
• Simple to use with ample flexibility and strength of features

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• Intuitive an easy to understand interface
• Fast
• Good value for the price

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• Formatting in general. It's a pain to refine a layout in Publisher in my opinion.
• Microsoft is so invested in their approach to software and making it look and feel like an Office 365 application that they inadvertantly cripple applications like Publisher.
• Earlier versions of Publisher gave you a lot more latitude and creative freedom. They were also much easier to work with. Not everything has to look like it's part of Office 365. They did the same ... thing to Access.

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• Have the ability to add a little more customization (like font sizes in Typewriter tool, etc).
• Have the ability to export individual pages into separate PDFs.
• Have the ability to easily resize.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

We use this product 2-3 times a month and have not been able to find a comparable alternative.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

There are a few quirks with Microsoft Publisher that make some functions a little tricky for new users at first, but most of our employees are able to figure out the quirks and work around them to use the product for their job. It is relatively high on the scale of usability.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

It does everything I need, such as OCR, redaction, Bates stamping, bookmarking, and handling large PDF files without crashing. It also does well with the extraction and addition of documents.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

Performance wise, PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor is flawless. It runs fast, and I haven't experienced any immediately crashing. The reports save quickly, and the document size is never an issue. It saves into a regular PDF, and we're able to open it on any other program or computer. All text boxes, features, and headers show up flawlessly on other programs.

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

While I have not directly used support for Microsoft Publisher, I have used their help files and found them to be useful. I have also found that most answers that I need can be found through simple web searches and chat platforms. In all though, there are very few times when the preloaded help files have not given me the answers that I need.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

The application had no issues (we did not contact support) and that's why I give a 10.

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

Microsoft Publisher is more for beginners, or for basic needs, anyone with some familiarity with the Microsoft suite should be able to use it easily. If you’re looking to create something more graphic and advanced, you’d probably want to look into something like InDesign, which is not as user friendly if you’re not familiar with it at all. For basic needs the average employee should be able to use Microsoft Publisher with ease.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

PDF Xchange hits a sweet spot for me and my users. It is powerful, includes a full suite of creation, markup, and management tools. It is very affordable.

Bluebeam is too much that isn't print and PDF related. It is EXPENSIVE ... more than $300 per person before almost mandatory additional training.

PDF Creator is good for PDF creation. It doesn't include markup and management tools.

• we have invested on our Microsoft license for our team and that has made a very big productivity for making banners and holdings for our projects as making it from third party would cost much higher and the return is very well over the comparison with third-party vendors
• Functionality is very easy, so we don’t have to train much to get it in production and use it efficiently so we don’t have to invest much on training and learning things and we can work on it directly with a very basic knowledge as well
• It has functionality to get stored and share things directly to the OneDrive and using curated links, which is very secure and reliable to transfer files without losing picture and banners quality and share them in lossless quality.

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• PDF XChange costs around $50-75 per person depending on the version.