Newbie Author's Guide

Helping new and aspiring authors navigate the publishing wilderness

Product and Company Review: Able2Extract 9.0 by Investintech

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File conversion tools can be a must for bloggers, business owners, authors and publishers or just about anyone who works with many different file types all the time. You never know when you need a handy-dandy tool on hand that can do the job when you need to convert something. I was able to try a new one out: Able2Extract 9.0 by Investintech. Even though it may not cater to all author/publisher needs (at least right now), it could help you with most!

Disclaimer: I was contacted by Investintech to try their product Able2Extract 9.0 for free. This has no effect on my views of the review of the product or my overall experience.

What is Able2Extract?

Able2Extract is a type of file conversion software that can convert just about any file into PDF or vice versa. You can open the PDF and make a few tweaks to it, but it is not a “PDF Editor Tool”. It also gets its name of being able to “extract” some information chosen by the user prior to conversion.

Before you simply think “it’s just another file conversion tool, and we have so many of them already”, there are some things that help set it apart from many of the others (not all).

It is one of the few programs you can download to your computer when you try it for a free trial or purchase a license to use it. You don’t have to bookmark a page and login on the Internet. This is nice if you aren’t in a place to get on the Internet and need to convert something on-the-go. Plus, there will be no need to upload and then download the finished file. Saves time and data usage (if that would apply to your internet connection).

It is also one of the few programs that I have been able to find or try that can handle PDFs that come from a scanned document. Some tools simply do not like them. Not sure why. This is one of the things that really stood out in my mind.

Have a lot of files to do at once? Then you can also do a batch conversion.

You can encrypt and protect your converted documents should you feel the need.

About the User Interface

The interface is straightforward and easy to use. Appearance was clean and user friendly. There are available tutorials available to you should you need them on their blog as well as on Facebook and Twitter. They also provide customer support. I have a couple such tutorials as a sample below.

Creating a Secure PDF

The New PDF to Excel Custom Conversion

They have many file conversion options to choose from: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Open Office, Publisher, HTML, and any of the image file types (bmp, png, jpg), and more.

Some of the settings can be easily tweaked to fit your needs. It’s very easy to play around with and not worry about breaking anything!

Pricing

The pricing for the full license for all the features is pretty reasonable and will pay for itself in the long run if you expect you will do lot of file conversions for your business in time and resources saved. Furthermore you have one tool to do the job, not several that all have separate licenses. Click here to compare pricing and features and get a paid subscription.

Not sure or want to try it out before buying? They have a free trial available to you. Click here.

Overall

Everything was very neat and user friendly. I didn’t really run into any crashes or technical issues during my trial. The download went smoothly and the program didn’t take up a ton of space on my computer or bog down the RAM.

This already great product could always have some kind of improvements to make it even better. Some capacity to share documents via email or to sharing tools like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Photobucket from the interface for instance? Possibly watermarking should the occasion call for it?

My contact at Investitech was very friendly and got back to me within reasonable timeframes and provided any information I needed for trying out the program.

Rating: 5/5 Cool B-)

Have you used it or would like to share comments or thoughts, please leave them below!

Company and Product Review: Cometdocs

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Are you a blogger or another kind of professional that handles a lot of different file types? Ever received a file that you don’t have a program or an app for on hand? There is an app for that, but where do you find that app? Enter in the frustration of having to look on the internet for a free app to view/copy/edit the file and risk downloading viruses, finding a bait-and-switch scheme that won’t give you what you need for free. The program or premium service is too expensive to have for something you just don’t use that much.

Some of the more common conversions like: Word to PDF, PDF to JPG, the reverse, or a whole other range of combinations each have their own free app that are online and they are frustrating at best or completely useless at the most. To add insult to injury, some of them have file limits per day or a tiny size limit or they email your file to you and it may never come since not all of them let you download right off. They usually don’t play nice with Dropbox or Google Drive.

*headdesk*

Let me introduce you to Cometdocs. You have all the file conversions you can think of all in one place. You can upload or import from Google Docs or Dropbox. You can sign up for free or look at their pricing plans to see what works for you. They have a table to show you what you don’t get for free so you can weigh in to see if a paid subscription would work better for you or not. They have a one time fee where you don’t have to pay again. That rarely happens and that is probably the best deal ever if you do a lot of conversions!

They have recently created an app that works directly with Google Drive. Read this post on their blog for details and how you can integrate it with Google Drive.

As a blogger, author, publisher, PR specialist, and everything else in between, I do a LOT of file conversions which will only increase as business does. I was excited to be able to check this out as it looked like something that would (finally!) be useful as opposed to a ton of unneeded programs and a bunch of bookmarked free online apps that don’t work half the time. Don’t get me wrong, if someone needs something converted once in a blue moon, then those would be great for them. Not so much for someone like me.

Disclaimer: I was contacted by a member of Cometdocs where I received a free trial offer for the premium service from Cometdocs to try their product for review. This doesn’t affect the honesty of my review. The opinions are are my very own and aren’t in any way influenced by Cometdocs or any of its associates.

Review:

The user interface was very straightforward and very easy to use. Upload and import from both Dropbox and Google Drive were a snap. I personally  have accounts at both Google Drive and Dropbox. The drag and drop method of choosing files was both user-friendly and neat.

Adding the app to Google Drive based on the above step by step instructions (which I did) were straight-forward and simple and spot on. The blog is helpful and customer support is also available if needed. Response time was great.

File conversions are a breeze and download and/or emailing the file is also a very cool feature. This is especially useful for someone who has to use file conversions for their business and can save a step or two with the download/upload conundrum.

I really like how they have thought of just about every file imaginable from the common ones to the not-so-common-didn’t-think-they-used-anymore ones like WordPerfect (I have actually gotten files from this program). So this saves time from having to “go on an app hunt” to both view, copy, or edit from a program you don’t/might not want to buy/download or risk getting viruses or dealing with those pesky bait-and-switch schemes for something you need done quick.

I believe the paid options are very affordable and will pay for itself in no time in time saved, hard drive space saved, missing, hair, and all the unnecessary things that go along with working with files. The one time fee is probably the best deal.

Customer service with my contact was speedy and friendly. They are constantly improving by listening to customer feedback. That’s also great to know.

Case in short, I was very impressed.

The one improvement I could think of would be to have a desktop app (kind of like Primo PDF, but with all the conversion power that Cometdocs has to offer) for use when you aren’t able to get online or don’t need to get online to do something. Offering this with both the paid and free options would great, just the difference in features, but not cost any extra. Just a thought!

Rating: 5/5 Cool B-)