Kofax Power PDF - once a sceptic, now a supporter and purchaser
June 21, 2021
Kofax Power PDF - once a sceptic, now a supporter and purchaser
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Power PDF Standard
Overall Satisfaction with Kofax Power PDF (formerly Nuance)
Used for self-employment to create PDF documents including sample contracts, internal policies and invoices. The key problem it addresses is having an easy way to create non-editable documents before they are sent to third party recipients, at reasonable expense. It's functionality also allows you to optimise the size of documents which is useful for making sure as much as possible can be sent via email rather than using a document sharing platform.
- Page deletion, adjustment and editing within larger documents and bundles is easy to do.
- Document conversion from PDF to Word, Excel or PowerPoint is simple and easy to do.
- Simple control panels make it easy to access and work out where various tools are.
- Automated indexing is a great inclusion, but it would be better if the layout, formatting and content of the index could be better controlled (e.g. for Court compliant documents).
- Make PDF Searchable is a really useful tool, though a recommendation for how many pages to process at a time should be included as doing more than 500 pages at a time can mean you are waiting for it to finish for over 45 minutes (excluding any proofreading) and then it may even crash.
- Estimated time to completion (e.g. 4 minutes left) can sometimes be more helpful than pages remaining (though this should not be removed) for some larger processing functions.
- At less than £100 for a perpetual license, Kofax falls within the right range for my small business and is probably the difference between having some PDF documents and not.
- There are time benefits in that I know how long most tasks are going to take and can therefore take control of that, but by having Kofax it means that I'm now more inclined to do that work myself rather than outsource it.
- Kofax allows faster response times (eg invoices) rather than waiting for someone else to sort it out.
- Kofax allows standardisation of approach to PDFing.
The fact that Kofax has mirrored much of the layout you might find in Microsoft style applications like Word and Excel makes things a lot simpler to find than with some other applications. I like that they aren't afraid to use images in some of their icons and that they've chosen different sizes of buttons and drop down bars for certain tasks. What makes the most difference though is that whoever has chosen how to lay those tools out AND what to name each icon has applied a common sense approach, and done close to their best to make those terms and phrases as obvious to a newcomer as possible (e.g. "Make PDF Searchable" rather than something alien to most people like "Add OCR formatting"). This improves speed to competency with using the tool, and reduces the number of online self-help searches I need to do.
I find Adobe products to be unhelpfully expensive for smaller business and non-business use. I don't find that Adobe products have as many options available in one product (you have to spread across other applications they offer to be able to do everything, which takes more time and costs a lot more). They also seem to rely too heavily on a sort of bland white application background which, as a matter of purely personal opinion, clashes with other applications you might be using at the same time and wanting to switch between. Kofax's use of purple/blue is helpfully distinct in its desktop icon and application background.
Do you think Tungsten Power PDF delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Tungsten Power PDF's feature set?
Yes
Did Tungsten Power PDF live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Tungsten Power PDF go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Tungsten Power PDF again?
Yes
When it comes to Kofax PDF, I make most use of the Document Assembly function to help reorder and arrange pages in my files, as well as the Rotate pages, Edit Text, document Conversion, and Combine files functions. A favourite tool of mine is the Insert Pages function, which allows individual pages from an existing PDF to be inserted into your existing document without ever having to fully open the file from which you are adding a page(s). I also make good use of the bookmarking, Make PDF Searchable function, and document Optimization tools. The Create Table of Contents tool also comes in handy occasionally, and I make infrequent use of the Redaction functions in the Advanced PDF application version. Having all of these in one clear place is so reassuring and enjoyable to do work with.