*** From the Archives ***
This article is from September 13, 2012, and is no longer current.
Happy Birthday PDF2ID: Recosoft Offers Super 50% Discount for One Day
Recosoft’s amazing product PDF2ID — which lets you open PDF and XPS files in InDesign as editable documents — has been around for five years? today! Happy birthday, big guy. So, to celebrate, Recosoft is offering 50% off the standard or professional versions of the product for 50% off to InDesignSecrets readers.
This special offer is good ’til midnight (central standard time) only, so get it while it’s hot! To take advantage of the discount, use the code PDF2ID_5years when ordering.
Here’s the press release for their newest product:
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Recosoft ships PDF2ID v3.5
Convert PDF & XPS to InDesign CS6
Osaka, Japan – Recosoft Corporation the developers of the PDF-to-Office, iWork® and OmniGraffle® conversion tools for the iPad, Mac and Windows, PDF2Office; the inventors of the only InDesign-to-PowerPoint and Word converter, ID2Office®; and pioneers of the PDF-to-InDesign conversion technology ships PDF2ID Standard and PDF2ID Professional v3.5 for Mac and Windows.
PDF2ID Standard and PDF2ID Professional v3.5 are newest versions of the most popular and accurate PDF-to-InDesign conversion tool in the market today. PDF2ID Standard and PDF2ID Professional v3.5 adds support for InDesign CS6 and also includes the capability to convert Windows XPS files to fully editable InDesign files. PDF2ID v3.5 now uses a modern hybrid 32/64-bit PDF and XPS conversion core resulting in an even more precise
PDF-to-InDesign conversion.
“With it’s new compatibility with InDesign CS6, the latest version of PDF2ID will no doubt continue to be a must-have tool for any InDesign user who needs to convert PDFs into native InDesign files,” says Chris Kitchener, Product Manager, Adobe® InDesign.
PDF2ID converts PDF and Windows XPS files into editable InDesign files by recreating the intended construction and layout of the document; forming paragraphs; applying styles; regrouping independent graphic elements; extracting images; creating tables; all automatically without any manual intervention.
Key New Features
InDesign CS6 support: PDF2ID v3.5 supports InDesign CS4-CS6 and includes variable page size PDF and XPS file conversion to InDesign.
Windows XPS File support: In addition to converting PDF to InDesign format, PDF2ID v3.5 now converts Windows XPS files to fully editable and formatted InDesign files.
Hybrid 32/64-bit PDF/XPS v6.0 reconstruction engine: PDF2ID v3.5 uses a hybrid 32/64-bit PDF/XPS v6.0 engine, which is 64-bit savvy.
Enhanced Image conversion support: PDF2ID v3.5 includes new image conversion options so that Lab/Grayscale/Indexed Color images without ICC profiles can be converted to a specific format independently of RGB/CMYK images.
Layout Reconstruction v6 engine: PDF2ID v3.5 uses the v6 layout reconstruction core improving Table formation, Complex Vector Graphics to image conversion, Paragraph structuring, Frames reduction and Graphics processing.
PDF2ID v3.5 is available immediately in the following configurations from the Recosoft web store in the following configurations (per license):
- PDF2ID Standard v3.5 US$199.00
- PDF2ID Professional v3.5 US$299.00
- PDF2ID Standard v3.5 Upgrade US$99.00
- PDF2ID Professional v3.5 Upgrade US$149.00
System Requirements
Mac OS: Mac OS X 10.5.8 and higher
Hardware: Intel based Mac
Application: InDesign CS4 Â CS6
Windows: Windows XP SP3 or higher
Hardware: Pentium III computer
Application: InDesign CS4 Â CS6
Recosoft Corporation has pioneered PDF2Office®, the de-facto PDF-to-Excel, PDF-to-Word, PDF-to-PowerPoint, PDF-to-OmniGraffle conversion utility; PDF2Office® for iWork, the only PDF-to-Keynote, PDF-to-Numbers and PDF-to-Pages conversion application; ID2Office, the InDesign-to-Word, InDesign-to-PowerPoint converter; and PDF2ID® the de-facto PDF-to-InDesign conversion tool. The company is a leader in designing and delivering PDF converters and InDesign software solutions enhancing workflow automation and productivity. For more information on Recosoft PDF converters and InDesign related solutions, visit https://www.recosoft.com
Contact Information
Recosoft Corporation
Hommachi 1-5-6, Chuo-ku, Osaka, Japan
Fax: +81-6-6260-5543
email: [email protected]
©Copyright 2012 Recosoft Corporation
ID2Office, PDF2Office, PDF2ID, PDFtoID are trademarks or registered trademarks of Recosoft Corporation in the US and/or other countries. Microsoft, Excel, PowerPoint, Word and the Office logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the US and/or other countries. Adobe and InDesign are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe System Incorporated in the US and/or other countries. Apple, Macintosh, MacNumbers, Keynote, Pages, iWork, iPod, iPhone, iOS, iPAD are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Apple, Inc. in the US and or other countries. All other trademarks are recognized and are the property of their respective owners.
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Hmmm. Just gave it a test drive. Not all that much better than Acrobat Pro. It includes running heads and folios in the text stream and there are LOTS of double word spaces throughout. Paragraphs with identical spec’s get different-named styles (Paragraph Style 1, Paragraph Style 2, Paragraph Style 3, etc.), even though they should all be the same.
Not ready for production work yet.
@Richard: I’m not sure what you’re talking about… Acrobat Pro doesn’t convert PDF to InDesign files. Are you talking about their PDF to Office product?
Nice comment about PDF2ID here: https://creativepro.com/forum/indesign-add-ons-scripts-scripting-and-plug-ins/pdf2id-latest-version-for-id6
Discount does not work for upgrades :-(
We’ve been using PDF2ID for a few years now, and it has saved us hundreds of hours over the years, especially when we have a client who needs a web2print template where we only have a supplied PDF. Sure, sometimes the formatting goes a bit AWOL, but it still gives a great starting point.
Not working on my CS5 :-(
We’ve just shipped out PDF2ID v4.0 built specifically for InDesign CC.
I’d be very wary dealing with this company, they are pretty ruthless. They’ll take your money and offer you almost no support.
I purchased the ID2Office plugin after thoroughly reading the product description. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, does it mention anything about the poor conversions you’ll get when converting documents that adhere to baseline grids, which represent a huge percentage of ID work I’d guess.
Admittedly the limitation is due to Word not being able to translate the paragraph spacing, but such a big limitation should be mentioned somewhere in the documentation or FAQs, both of which I read before purchasing. In this sense Word’s limitation is also ID2Office’s limitation too. I’m not a Word user, so I had no idea that paragraph spacing is more or less impossible to manipulate to the extent you can in InDesign.
After I figured this out and contacted support within hours of purchasing they basically told me that I should try x, y and z before finally admitting that the software would never be able to convert anything that uses a baseline grid without major spacing issues resulting in a useless file.
As soon as I asked for a refund the door was well and truly shut in my face. No contact from the company other than to say that I should have read the documentation, which I already had, and did again – no mentions of the issue whatsoever.
I’m a one-man-band and the client I was hoping to convert the ID file for is not willing to pay for 400 pages of garbled mess in Word format. So I’m left to suck up the cost of the software which is more than my monthly studio rent.
I’m not without error in this story, I should have contacted the vendor and double checked that it would have converted a baseline grid aligned document. But there’s good ways and bad ways of dealing with your product’s limitations – deceit pre-purchase stage and disregard post-purchase are definitely not the good way!
Bare wary!
@Jon: Wow, that sounds really frustrating. But this really doesn’t sound like Recosoft’s fault to me; Word is just not nearly as powerful a layout tool as InDesign. There’s just no way to reproduce much of what InDesign does in Word. I have no idea what Recosoft’s refund policy is. Was there a demo version?
Thanks for your reply. I’m not saying it’s Recosoft’s fault, I’m just saying how disappointed I am at their attitude post-sale and how I think they’re hiding this flaw from potential customers.
Their was a demo version, I used it, converted the first 6 pages (demo limit) of my document and it converted it pretty well. The paragraph breaks were less of an issue in the first 6 pages of my document but foolishly I didn’t think to convert 6 pages from the middle of the document where it mattered. That’s my fault and I’m kicking myself for it and is what I meant when I said ‘I’m not without error in this story’ in my initial comment.
That’s the bottom line is that if there was a mention in their documentation that baseline grids and this plugin were not compatible, I wouldn’t have paid for it.
Recosoft have a 30 day returns policy – https://store.digitalriver.com/store?Action=DisplayReturnAndCancellationsPage&Locale=en_US&SiteID=recosoft&resid=Ut6KZwrR-gIAAAbxZLUAAABF&rests=1390316134286
I asked for a refund within days of purchase and since then I’ve heard nothing other than the ‘you should have checked the documentation’ I mentioned earlier. After presenting my case in a reply I’ve heard absolutely nothing. I’ve re-sent the email a couple times. Nothing.
I think their reluctant to be open about that limitation as they know it will cost them sales. But that’s just my opinion, and the one of a disgruntled customer ranting on the internet! I’m not expecting a mass boycott, just hoping people who need to make an informed decision about buying their products get to factor the above facts into that decision.