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What's new in this version:

PDF24 Creator 10.0.9
Toolbox: Sign PDF tool now has separate options for stroke and fill color:
- The Sign PDF tool now has a line and fill color option in the toolbar. This is sometimes required for some signatures to completely change the color of the signature, as the automatic detection of the combined color tool sometimes does not work as expected.

Toolbox: Sign PDF tool scales large signatures better when inserting them:
- Inserting large signatures was ugly from the user's point of view, as it was tedious to scale them down to the desired size. It's better now. The signature is inserted a little smaller if it is very large, so that it is easier to move it to the right place and to change the size.

Toolbox: Blacken PDF tool renders edited pages for security:
- Previously, the information from the blackening was placed on the page as a layer. With PDF editing tools it was too easy to get rid of this layer. In order to increase security, edited pages are now also rendered to an image and the actual content of the page is replaced with the image. In this way, you can no longer remove layers to make the content below visible. This makes the PDF a bit larger, but this is the only way to guarantee security.

Toolbox: Backspace button navigation disabled:
- Users have reported that the backspace key can be used to go back to the overview page. If you now e.g. edited a PDF and used the backspace key, then you leave the edit page, which is really ugly. This issue has now also been improved.


PDF24 Creator 10.0.8
Toolbox saves last window placement:
- The toolbox now saves the last used window size and position on the screen. This way, the user can better adapt the application to the hardware he is using. Especially with large screens, some users do not want a maximized display.

Tray icon Open action improved:
- The tray icon can be used to open the PDF24 via the icon context menu or via a double-click. This behavior has been improved. If the toolbox is activated, then the toolbox is opened. If the Toolbox is not activated, then the older launcher is opened instead.

Some brush types disabled for tools in the toolbox:
- For the Edit, Blacken and Annotate tools in the Toolbox, we have disabled some brush types because they do not run correctly in the offline version. Here we need to see how to switch these brush types so that they also work in the offline version.

Importing signatures into the signing tool improved:
- Signatures that are available as images can be imported into the tool. With large images there were problems with the display, so it was difficult to import them. Here we have improved so that this is now easier.

More functions can be deactivated in the toolbox:
- More instructions have been added in the Toolbox to disable some tools there. This can be done via the Windows Registry. The registry entries have the following form: feature.toolbox.[blacken | ...] = [0 | 1] (DWORD). For example, if you want to disable the blacken tool, then set feature.toolbox.blacken = 0.

Language files updated:
- Problem with updater fixed
- The updater did not evaluate an instruction correctly, which caused problems with the detection of updates. This problem has been fixed in this version.

Reader cannot overwrite currently opened file:
- In Reader we have built in a protection so that the currently opened file cannot be overwritten. If you wanted to do this in older versions, then there were problems with saving and the newly saved file was empty.

Filter options in the toolbox have made disabled tools visible:
- In the toolbox, there are several filters that the user can use to display tools. One of the filters is the one for recently used tools. Furthermore, there is the possibility to deactivate certain functions throughout the program, e.g. if they should not be available in a company. However, the use of the filters caused that these deactivated functions were made visible. This problem is now fixed.


PDF24 Creator 10.0.7
- Change log not available for this version


PDF24 Creator 10.0.6
PDF24 Toolbox shows hint page for an incompatible system:
- The PDF24 Toolbox requires Windows 10 to run without problems. With older systems, you may need to make some changes to make the UI display properly. If an environment is detected which is not sufficient for the PDF24 Toolbox, a hint page is displayed and some options are shown. This is a better way of picking up those users who are currently experiencing errors because they are using a too old system.


PDF24 Creator 10.0.5
- Included Java VM updated to version 15

Automatic DPI reduction in the OCR tool:
- We have further improved the OCR engine in the OCR tool. Some users have reported that sometimes no text is recognized. We have investigated this and found a problem with the DPI value. The DPI value is now automatically lowered to ensure that text can be recognized. Since, depending on the way the PDF is created, there may be a problem with the size and memory limit, and Tesseract will fail if the underlying image file becomes too large, this was a necessary step. The automatic DPI adjustment prevents this, because if the PDF file has an abnormal page size, the DPI value is automatically reduced so that internal processing does not fail.


PDF24 Creator 10.0.4
Option to leave the Scanner App open:
- In the selection window to choose a scanner source, there is now also a checkbox to leave the scanner app open after the scan process. This way, you can scan several pages in a row more quickly

Option to use scanner data sources via twain_32.dll:
- The twain_32.dll is part of Windows and sometimes displays other data sources that are not currently displayed. Therefore we have now made these data sources selectable via the selection window

Scanner selection window shows sources grouped:
- The scanner selection window now shows the data sources grouped. Data sources are determined in different ways and assigned to a group. The UI displays these groups and the corresponding data sources
- Included Java VM updated to version 15
- Language files updated


PDF24 Creator 10.0.3
Fixed problems importing from scanners:
- Version 10 had problems taking to a scanner. Access to the TWAIN interface was no longer possible. The reason is the update to the x64 architecture in version 10. We have analyzed this issue in more detail and developed a workaround for this problem. Through an indirection, the PDF24 Creator can now load x86 and x64 Twain drivers and import data from these sources. The user can select the appropriate source beforehand. If there are any further problems in this area, please let us know.


PDF24 Creator 10.0.2
Fixed problems saving files with certain tools from the toolbox:
- The tools for editing, annotating, signing and redacting were not able to save certain PDF files. The save function resulted in an error and the visualization for saving files was never stopped. Users have made us aware of this problem and have sent us test files that we have analyzed. The underlying problem has been fixed and the tools now also work with the PDFs sent to us.
- More language files updated

Problems with driving scanners are still there and we are working on them:
- Those who cannot import from your scanner should still use version 9.2.2, which you can also download from the PDF24 download section. Problems caused by the switch to x64 are known and we are working on a workaround to solve this problem.


PDF24 Creator 10.0.1
Problems with loading password protected PDF files into the toolbox fixed:
- We have fixed an error when loading password protected pdf files into the toolbox. Some tools did not behave correctly with this kind of files and loading failed. This problem is fixed with version 10.0.1

Fixed problems when loading PDF files into a toolbox that contain special characters:
- An error when loading files into the Toolbox that have some special characters in the path name was fixed. The Toolbox was not able to handle this kind of files. The encoding was not implemented correctly. This has been corrected and the problem is fixed.

A bug in the overlay tool introduced in version 10.0.0 was fixed:
- We have also fixed a bug introduced in version 10.0.0 regarding the overlay PDF tool. An error message appeared with an error during file conversion. This problem is now also fixed

Fixed an error when unlocking PDFs with the unlock tool in the toolbox:
- A bug with the PDF unlock tool was fixed. The unlocked file could not be saved by the user. Instead, the locked version was saved incorrectly. Now the correct version is used when saving

An error with the used toolbox url encoding scheme was fixed:
- A bug with the URL encoding scheme used in the toolbox was also fixed. Some users could not work properly with the new Toolbox due to special characters in user names or special characters in file names

More language files updated:
- Most of the language files are now up to date


PDF24 Creator 10.0.0
PDF24 Toolbox added:
- The biggest new feature in PDF24 Creator 10 is the toolbox. The new toolbox contains many PDF tools and which makes them as easily accessible as possible. With the online PDF Tools from PDF24 we have seen that users find very simple PDF Tools great. As a result, we have constantly expanded and improved the online tools. Our goal is to offer all PDF Tools as online and offline versions in the PDF24 Creator. Since the development of the online tools is a bit faster than the development of the offline tools, there were many tools online, but they were not yet available offline. This discrepancy will now be eliminated with the PDF24 Creator 10. The new PDF24 Creator 10 gets with the toolbox all the tools that are also available online and we are proud of that. Users who cannot or do not want to use online tools for data protection reasons can now find all tools as offline version in PDF24 Creator 10.

Paths in the registry changed:
- The PDF24 Creator settings are located in the Windows Registry. With version 10 we have adapted the paths where the PDF24 Creator stores the settings. The old paths were historical, but did not contain the term PDF24, which has always been a bit unsightly. Previously the settings were saved under "SOFTWARE/PDFPrint". In Version 10, "SOFTWARE/PDF24" is now used instead. Attempts have been made in the past to change this, but so far it has never worked. The PDF24 Creator 10 is a major update, so this point is now included here.

Update to Ghostscript 9.53:
- The PDF24 Creator 10 now includes the latest version of Ghostscript. In Ghostscript itself there have been many changes in the last revisions and we were advised to update to the current version. We have done this and we have adapted the PDF24 Creator to the new Ghostscript version.

PDF24 Creator 10 is now built for 64-bit systems:
- On the one hand, we have been asked about it several times, but on the other hand it is necessary for some new components to work properly with the PDF24 Creator. All parts of the PDF24 Creator are now x64-compatible. Dependent components and programs like Ghostscript are also delivered in the 64-bit version. This means that all parts of the PDF24 Creator are designed for x64 systems

Screen Capture Tool improved:
- The Screen Capture Tool can now also save to a file. This new mode is now available in the user interface. The tool also saves recently used settings so that you can take a screenshot more quickly next time.

OCR tool usable via command line:
- Using the command line you can now also detect text in files. The command line interface for the OCR tool is described in the new PDF24 Creator Manual. Some users have asked for such a solution and we have included this feature in version 10.

PDF24 Creator Manual is now available:
- With the PDF24 Creator 10 there is now also a manual for the first time, which contains a lot of information about the PDF24 Creator. This information is especially interesting for administrators. The manual will be further improved and maintained.

Fixed a problem with the generation of PDF/A-2b files:
- We have fixes a problem with the generation of PDF/A-2b files. Validation of generated files did not pass tests. This problem is fixed now


PDF24 Creator 9.2.2
Improved:
- The pagination options have been changed so that the start offset marks only the first page on which to start pagination. The page numbers themselves are no longer influenced. In this way, the correct page number now appears on the correct page in the document. This change is useful when documents have been merged and when you need to add page numbers to the new pages.

Updated:
-The Portuguese and Portuguese-Brazilian language files were incorrectly interchanged. This has been corrected. Some other language files have also been improved

Fixed:
- A problem with the updater has been fixed. The updater could not find some updates. Some users have made us aware of this


PDF24 Creator 9.2.1
Problem with 256 Bit encryption fixed:
- Some users have reported that there are problems with 256 bit encryption. We have investigated this. The problem does not seem to affect all users, because on our test systems we could not reproduce the problem. Version 9.2.1 provides a workaround for this problem, so that the 256 encryption is running again on the computers that reported problems.


PDF24 Creator 9.2.0
Problem with PDF printer fixed:
- A recent Windows update has caused the PDF printer to stop working correctly. Print jobs were stuck in the queue. We have analyzed and fixed the problem. All users who have problems with the PDF printer should upgrade to the current version 9.2.0.

Problem with metadata and PDF/A fixed:
- Problems occurred when changing the metadata of PDF/A files. This version fixes a problem in this area

PDF printer driver description improved:
- In the PPD file that describes the PDF printer, there were some minor problems. These have been fixed. Furthermore some minor improvements were made. For example, the minimum page size has been further reduced, which is sometimes useful for label production.

Improvements when loading many files in the Creator:
- In the Creator there were improvements when loading many files. Sometimes the display was not correct and the UI became slow when several hundred files were loaded.

Downloads folder in the Creator page tree:
- The downloads folder is now listed in the page tree of the Creator. This makes it easier to find this folder, because many files come from the Internet and end up in the downloads folder.

Updater improved:
- Many improvements have been made to the Updater, which will be necessary in the future. The Updater is now much more flexible, which will be necessary when choosing the right update. In the future there will be e.g. x64 versions and the updater has to choose the right architecture.

Password request when saving a PDF:
- The output profiles have been given a new option. You can now set that passwords are queried when a PDF is created. This way you can set the passwords again and again and thus give each PDF a different password.


PDF24 Creator 9.1.1
Send as fax not working when fax printer was not installed:
- If the fax printer was not installed, the functions for sending as a fax did not work due to a missing configuration parameter. This is now fixed and you can send faxes even if the fax printer is not installed.

Fixed a bug exchanging files with the PDF24 services:
- Due to an error within a certain function, the file name was not exchanged correctly with the online services PDF24 Mail, PDF24 CloudPrint, PDF24 Fax. This led to some problems there, e.g. a missing file name in the folder for sent faxes. This problem is now fixed.

Larger timeout for QPDF unlock operation:
- Sometimes it takes a little longer than expected for QPDF to unlock PDF files. The time limit now depends on the file size, so large PDF files get a little more time to unlock.

QPDF update to version 10.0.1:
- This release brings some optimisations regarding speed


PDF24 Creator 9.1.0
OCR: Option for automatic saving in the same directory:
- With this new option, the OCR tool is able to automatically save processed files in the directory where the file is located. This option can be very useful when processing many files.

OCR: Option for automatic saving in an output directory:
- With this new option, the OCR tool is able to automatically save processed files in a directory. This option can be very useful when processing many files

OCR: Skip documents and pages with text:
- With this new option, the OCR tool is able to skip files or pages that already contain text. In this way, files are not saved with duplicate text

OCR: Number, how many files are processed in parallel, is adjustable:
- This new option allows the user to set how many files should be processed in parallel. In this way, the user can decide how heavily his computer may be used

OCR: Security prompts for unsaved files:
- When files are removed or when the application is closed and if there are unsaved files, a confirmation prompt is displayed

OCR: Menu icon for each file:
- At the end of each line of a file entry there is a menu icon with further options for the file

OCR: Show recognized text via the menu icon:
- The menu icon now contains an option to display the recognized text. This makes it easier to see which text has been recognized

OCR: Error message if language information cannot be loaded:
- Language files and language information are downloaded from the Internet due to their size. If this fails, an appropriate message is displayed. Buttons for retrying or canceling are available.

OCR: Integration of a cache, for faster reprocessing:
- The cache makes a subsequent OCR process for the same file complete faster. This is especially useful if the options are changed later and the OCR process is restarted.

OCR: Faster processing:
- File processing is much faster with this new version than before. Sometimes files are processed almost twice as fast

OCR: Tesseract Update to version 4.1.1:
- The new version of Tesseract fixes problems and brings improvements so that these new features also benefit the user

OCR: GUI revised:
- The GUI is now slightly larger so that all new elements can be displayed
- The options area uses a flow layout to allow more options to be used in this area without wasting too much space
- There is a menu icon for each file with additional functions
- Icons in the toolbar were revised

General: PDF Lib improvements:
- Further improvements have also been made to the PDF Lib, which is used internally in PDF24 for many tasks

General: Password Cache to improve decryption of many files:
- Entered passwords are stored internally in the open program and will be used automatically when further documents are loaded. If several documents have the same password, then the password does not have to be entered again for these files.

Settings: Problem with duplicate entries solved:
- There is a Reload button in the settings area PDF Printer, Automatic Save, Profiles. Using this button has resulted in duplicate entries in the selection box. This problem is solved.

Creator: Automatic folder display when loading a file via command line:
- If a file is loaded in the Creator via command line, the folder where the file is located is displayed in the file explorer

Reader: Fixed problem with date display in file information area:
- The minute in the date was not correct due to an incorrect formatting specification. This issue has been fixed

Reader: Fixed problems when loading files with special characters in the name:
- PDF files with special characters in the name could not be loaded on some systems. There was a problem with the character encoding which caused these files not to be found. This problem has been fixed.


PDF24 Creator 9.0.6
Creator: Fixed problems loading non-PDF files:
- The creator could only load PDF files, but no longer displayed other files after the conversion. This problem was hidden in the previous version. Version 9.0.6 fixes this problem.


PDF24 Creator 9.0.5
Creator: Flickering removed:
- The Creator has been further optimized and annoying flickering has been eliminated in many places. This particularly affects flickering when scrolling and when selecting / deselecting / rotating pages.

Creator: Automatic hiding of the drag & drop info:
- The drag & drop info in the right window area is now hidden if loaded documents cover this info. This optimizes the display somewhat.

Creator: Asynchronous file loading activated:
- In the Creator, files are now loaded asynchronously to the user interface. This means that the GUI is less blocked when files are loaded. Especially when inserting many PDFs there were annoying blocks.

Creator: Fixed problems with sorting the file list:
- In a few cases, the function for comparing and sorting the file list has led to inaccurate results. This little problem is now also off the table.

Notifications: display problem fixed:
- There was a problem displaying content when displaying notifications. This has been resolved.

Overlay + OCR: Improvement in combining documents:
- Further improvements were made when combining PDFs using the overlay method. In older versions, the content of some documents was not combined correctly, so that the desired result was not generated. Thanks to the optimizations, we can now combine many more documents better. This change affects the overlay function and therefore also the OCR feature, which is also uses the overlay method.

Fixed an issue with displaying some banners in customized versions:
- Users can customize the PDF24 Creator with a banner. With some banners there was a problem with the display (briefly visible and then gone). This problem should now be solved.


PDF24 Creator 9.0.4
Issues with the digital paper feature fixed:
- Users have reported problems with the digital paper function. We analyzed this and optimized the code that combines the digital paper file with the actual document. The optimized code now supports more digital paper files. If you are experiencing problems with this feature, or if you have digital paper files that do not work, you should upgrade to this release, as this release will likely fix your issues.


PDF24 Creator 9.0.3
Reset to Ghostscript 9.27:
- With the current Ghostscript version 9.50 there are problems with the transparency of the watermark and the page number feature. Therefore Ghostscript 9.27 is used again. The problems with Ghostscript 9.50 have to be solved together with the Ghostscript team.


PDF24 Creator 9.0.1
- Change log not available for this version


PDF24 Creator 9.0.0
Rotation option for paper and overlay available:
- We've added a rotation option to the Paper and Overlays option block that lets you customize the paper or overlay page orientation according to the actual document

Option to use the save file name chooser dialog in auto save mode:
- This option can be used to let the user decide where to place the current file in automatic save mode. If this option is enabled and the PDF printer is configured in automatic save mode, a dialog box appears for selecting the file name in which the user must select the save path

Merge with zipper method available in the Creator:
- There is now also the new merge with zipper method available. This new merge mode merges page after page (page one from first file, then page one from second file, ...). This tool is added to the toolbar of the app

Function to reverse the page order now available:
- The Creator has a new function to reverse the page order of a document. The function is available in the context menu of a file that was opened there. Right-click an open file or click the new menu icon, and then click the appropriate menu item. This tool is very useful for scanned documents to reverse the page order and get the backs in the correct order. This is necessary for the new zipper merge, for example.

Document toolbar of the Creator now has a burger menu item:
- This burger menu item can be used to show the context menu of a file

Re-enabled the internal file explorer of the Creator:
- We have reactivated the creator's internal explorer and added some optimizations. The file explorer can be activated or deactivated from the main menu of the program

Copy/Paste improvements in the PDF reader for form fields:
- Copy/Paste could not be used in older versions of the Reader for form fields. This is now possible and you can use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V in form fields

PDF printer file name detection improved:
- We have improved the code that is responsible for recognizing the filename and path of the printed files. The new algorithm is slightly better

Replacement of special characters in file names:
- We found some more places where special characters in the filename were not replaced. This could lead to unsaved files or unwanted behavior. Invalid file name characters are now also replaced for files attached to a mail to avoid problems here
- Overlay and paper method improved
- We are now using a new algorithm to combine the contents of the files (digital paper and actual document), which gives better results under different conditions. The old method can be used by setting overlay.mode = "old" in the Windows registry settings
- Translaton file updates

Fix for a special PDF auto rotate pages bug:
- We found this special case that could lead to incorrectly rotated pages in PDF files and we fixed it


PDF24 Creator 8.9.0
Common: Format options dialog visually improved:
- The format options dialog is a larger component with dozens of options. Here we have room for improvement. We have optically improved the page tree on the left side and optimized some paddings and margins to make working with this component easier

Common: User settings key name changes of the assistant and creator:
- There are some options in the settings related to the PDF printer assistant and the creator. We have changed the names of these settings to the new format we introduced in other components, so that they now use the new format with a prefix followed by a period

Common: Single instance lock of the PDF24 Updater:
- We have implemented a single instance lock for the PDF24 Updater to prevent the Updater from opening twice. It does not make sense to have multiple instances of this application open

Common: More options available in the settings U:
- We have added some more options to the preferences interface. You can now also configure a fixed save directory used by the PDF printer assistant (assistant.fixedSaveDir) and you can tell the PDF printer assistant to use the name of the first file in the list when merging to a single PDF (assistant.joinFilesUseFirstName)

Common: Auto rotate pages are now enabled by default when converting PS files to PDF:
- PS files normally comes from the PDF printer, which we convert internally into the PDF format. Printing applications often adapt the orientation of pages to the standard paper formats, resulting in incorrectly rotated pages. For this reason, we have by default turned on the option to automatically rotate pages during conversion

Common: MAPI mail interface now creates modeless dialogs:
- The MAPI mail interface now creates modeless dialogs so that the user is able to work with other windows. The outlook mail interface has already used this mode

Common: Mail interface selection bug fixed:
- There was a bug in the mail interface selection code that wrongly switched back to the MAPI interface if the PDF24 mail interface was disabled through the settings

Common: Reduced wait times of command processor:
- We could reduce waiting times of the shell command processor, which is responsible for calling other applications like Ghostscript. This should in some cases lead to slightly faster results

Common: PDF printer auto save command templates:
- We have extended the PDF printer settings user interface page. We have added a selection box to select PDF printer auto save command templates to make it easier to set up a PDF printer configured in auto save mode

Common: Option NoReader=1 did not work correctly:
- With the NoReader registry setting you can control whether the PDF24 Reader is visible in the PDF24 Creator or not. This option did not work correctly in previous versions. This has been fixed

Common: Fix for a PDF security settings issue in case of an empty owner password:
- We have found a bug in the code that is responsible for applying the PDF security settings. An empty owner password leads to a small problem

Common: Update to QPDF 8.4.1:
- We had opened a ticket at the QPDF project because QPDF did not handle umlauts correctly in file names. This has been improved in QPDF 8.4.1. Internally we now use this version

Common: Update to Ghostscript 9.27:
- We had written a bug report to the Ghostscript team because older versions of Ghostscript had problems with some PDF files. The issue was font and color changes during PDF file reprocessing. The new version fixes this

Common: Optimized PDF password encoding:
- We have optimized the PDF password encoding when locking or unlocking pdf files to fix potential encoding issues with some readers

Assistant: Option for fixed save directory:
- The assistant now understands an option to use a fixed save directory when saving files to disk. This is the "assistant.fixedSaveDir" option that you can also configure via the settings interface

Assistant: Remembers last save directory:
- The assistant now remembers the last save directory, but only if the "assistant.fixedSaveDir" option is not used and if no directory is associated with the current file

Assistant: Special case for files stored in the temporary files directory:
- If the directory of a file is TEMP, then we do not set this directory as initial folder in the file selection dialog


PDF24 Creator 8.8.2
Faster language selection field in the OCR tool:
- We have over 100 languages available for selection in the OCR tool, which can be selected via the selection box. The list is now long and the loading time of the list was slightly higher than it should be, which was not so easy to use when working fast. We have optimized here. The language selection box is now fast again.

Correction for an un-inserted OCR text layer in previously compressed PDF files:
- In previously compressed PDF files, we were unable to merge the OCR text layer with the actual PDF. Here we have also optimized to eliminate this problem. OCR is now also possible with PDF files that were previously compressed.

Correction for overlay / underlay for PDF files with compressed PDF objects:
- Merging a PDF with compressed objects was problematic and we had problems with it. This problem has been solved and we are now able to merge PDF files here as well. This feature is the basis for the paper and overlay feature in the software.

Correction for Overlay / Underlay using the "Repeat Last Page" feature:
- The problem has crept in one of the last versions. If the option "Repeat last page" was used, the two PDFs were not merged correctly. This problem is now also out of the world.