There are ongoing problems with PDF tools:
- Either you have loads of functionality at the cost of being bulky and slow or lightweight quick but missing power features
- Sensitive documentation is still very connected to PDF, so important data like taxes or customer information can't be used in even very mature, web-based services
- Available freeware options for PDF tools invariably have one or two great features but never all in one place.
Portable software is particularly well suited to address issues with this format, letting you gather a group of programs and then apply the best tool for the job. This is also for my own use as it’s happened a few times that I wished we had a PDF tool for a given task and then I find out later we’ve had a program that could do that for years now.
Disclaimer
This is just an initial collection, I’m not aiming to be the source for a PDF tool and features matrix (that’s a bit larger of a project than I can take on) but feedback/contributions are welcome and appreciated.
(The fancy nested list below was generated using LibreOffice and Hotditor.)
Tools grouped by feature
- Comments, addendums (arrows, highlighter, etc.)
- Foxit - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1041
- PDFXChange - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2832
- Jsoft PDF Reducer - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=24464
- LibreOffice (via the gallery function) https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2055
- Manually rearrange pages
- PDFArranger - viewtopic.php?p=100312#p100312
- LibreOffice - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2055
- Interspursed / coallate (paste in pages 1, 3, 5, etc.)
- PDFArranger - viewtopic.php?p=100312#p100312
- PDF SAM - viewtopic.php?p=50424#p50424
- Conversion
- Convert images to PDF
- Faststone – https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=207 (thanks juverax)
- i2PDF - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1908
- LibreOffice (via the Impress “Insert – Media – Photo Album/Gallery”) https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2055
- ImBatch https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2971
- PDFArranger - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2917
- Export PDF to images
- PDFXChange - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2832
- PDF MultiTool (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=22481
- PDF to Word/RTF/HTML
- UniPDF (not portable) - viewtopic.php?p=66956#p66956
- PDF MultiTool (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=22481
- Word/Excel/PowerPoint to PDF (via import – some tools are better than others)
- LibreOffice - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2055
- FreeOffice and all Softmaker Office tools - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1463
- ONLYOFFICE (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=23285
- XPS to PDF
- ONLYOFFICE (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=23285
- Delete metadata
- UniPDF (not portable) - viewtopic.php?p=66956#p66956
- Convert images to PDF
- Batch operations
- OCR (image to text)
- Orpalis PDF OCR Free (not portable) viewtopic.php?p=100496#p100496
- Add a password or other permissions
- UnityPDF - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2603
- PDFTK Builder Enhanced- https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1066
- Split/Merge/Rotate
- PDFTK Builder - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1066
- PDF SAM - viewtopic.php?p=50424#p50424
- UnityPDF - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2603
- Compression
- FileOptimizer – https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2377
- ORPALIS PDF Reducer Free (adware, not portable) - https://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=23310
- OCR (image to text)
- Image edits
- Color/brightness filters
- Jsoft PDF Reducer (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=24464
- Autocrop whitespace
- PDFArranger - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2917
- Watermark
- Jsoft PDF Reducer (not portable)- viewtopic.php?f=4&t=24464
- Color/brightness filters
- Other
- PDF Printer
- Doro PDF (not portable) viewtopic.php?f=20&t=22459
- Regular expressions (regex) search
- STDU https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2045
- PDF MultiTool (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=22481
- dnGrep - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=24460
- Fileseek (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=24772
- Split pages (horizontally or vertically)
- PDFArranger - https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2917
- Measurement tools
- Extract tables
- PDF MultiTool (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=22481
- Remove OCR (convert back to a simple picture)
- PDF MultiTool (not portable) - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=22481
- PDF Printer
Related:
- Export images from a PDF file - PDF Multitool, PDFTrick, and LibreOffice.
- Combine batch of images into a PDF - viewtopic.php?t=25054#p97239
- Problems with PDF - viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25190
- Converting from XPS format? [resolved] - viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21428
- How to pull text out of a PDF and have it wrap correctly - viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24286