The application – along with app-specific converters of PDF-to-Powerpoint, and PDF-to-Excel – represents the first foray of China-based AnyBizSoft – a longtime developer of Windows software – into the Mac OS. Often the Windows pedigree of such apps is readily apparent in the look-and-feel of the interface, but in this case, AnyBizSoft have done some homework and it looks much like a product from a traditional Mac stable. (The giveaway is mainly in the choice of menu shortcuts: ⌘P is not “Print”, as usual, but Preview PDF file; ⌘F isn’t “Find…” but File Configuration; and Remove is, for some reason, not delete, but ⌘-delete).

It helps that the design is a homage to minimalism: on launch, you are presented with merely a 600 x 525 px window, with the simple invitation "To get started, please drag and drop PDF files here or add PDF files from the File menu."
Each PDF file you add is added to the window as a wide rounded-rectangular button showing a PDF icon, its name, its number of pages & file size [image]. On the far right, by default, is the familiar stylized “W” icon, grayed-out, indicating that the default setting is to convert the PDF file into MS Word. If you wish to change this, you click on the little cogwheel that appears next to it, which offers you the option of converting it into one of the five other file types possible: Excel, Powerpoint, HTML, Text, or EPUB. While there, you can also specify a page range other than the default of “all pages”.

Changing the target file format results in a different icon showing on the right – the familiar Excel and Powerpoint icons, or the roughly compatible equivalents of “T” and “H” for Text and HTML formats, respectively.

Once you’ve got all the files in place, clicking the “Convert” button converts all of them. The operative word here is “all”: they ALL get converted all over again, even if you’ve already converted one or more of them before. This is a surprising – not to say disconcerting – interface inconsistency, given that other operations (including Removing) are applicable to individual files. I trust that in future versions only the selected files can be converted on demand. In the meantime, if you don’t want all files to be converted repeatedly, Remove all those that you don’t need at a given moment, and leave only the ones that you do want converted.

After conversion, the righthand icon for each file becomes fully visible, and clicking on it reveals the converted file. This is a nice touch, as it saves one from going to the Finder to locate the document and double-clicking it. (Converted documents, incidentally, are placed automatically in a “PDF Converter” folder within the user’s Documents folder – a good default setting, but in future versions one hopes the user would be able to change this default to a folder of their choice.)


Proof of the pudding
Reliable PDF conversion into MS Office documents has been a holy grail of desktop computing ever since PDFs were invented, but has always been problematic. In this respect, PDF-Converter-for-Mac (henceforth, PDFCM) provides very serviceable results.
For testing, I used a complex MS Word document with logos, graphics, tables etc. It came through flawlessly, as near as I could tell:


(Interestingly, conversion to Word-substitutes, such as NeoOffice or Pages, didn’t work nearly as well: graphics were lost, and in the case of Pages, so was the text layout.)

Converting the same document to Powerpoint was equally impressive, resulting in one page per slide:



Converting into HTML resulted in a faithful copy, complete with a page navigation bar on the left and more controls at the top:



Needless to say, after that, the conversion into plain text was no problem at all.

Converting into EPUB proved to be more challenging – the graphics were kept, but the text was gone. However, I reserve judgement, as this may be due to the quality of the EPUB reader I was using.

Converting into Excel
Converting into Excel is something that might arise where you get a PDF of a spreadsheet of figures, which you’d like to extract the figures from and manipulate yourself. The example I used came through fine – but again, only if you open the result in the real MS Excel: Excel subsitutes, such as NeoOffice Spreadsheet and Apple’s Numbers, treated it as a CSS stylesheet rather than provide the figures. (Mariner Calc couldn’t open it at all.)



Converting password-protected files
As a final benefit, PDFCM offers the ability to circumvent some restrictions in password-protected PDF files: if the password is set only to prevent printing and editing of the PDF file, you can convert it with PDFCM and do your editing and printing from the result, without providing the password. (The password is required, however, in the case of files that require it to be opened.)

Conclusion
AnyBizSoft’s PDF Converter for Mac is a solid, one stop-shop solution for converting PDF files into editable files – provided you’re using genuine MS Office applications to open the results in the case of conversion into .doc or .xls formats.

Its big advantage over its competition is that it provides one-stop conversion into no fewer than six common formats (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Text, HTML or EPUB). At $69.95 MRP, that works out at under $12 per file format conversion – not a bad deal. Its batching facility will be highly useful for those who need to convert whole slews of PDFs in one go. Between it and Mac OS ability to make a PDF file out of virtually any document through the Print dialog, you have the ability to edit and save PDF files without having to buy the full Adobe Acrobat software.

Its faults are minor and easily corrected in future versions. And it would undoubtedly benefit from a snappier, less generic, name. STOPPRESS readers are eligible to a 20% ($15) discount by clicking here.