PDFCreator

What's new in this version:

PDFCreator 3.3.1
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 3.3.0

PDF/A validation:
- As of today, business users can now choose to create a PDF/A validation report together with their PDF/A file. It can be activated in Profiles -> Convert -> Save validation report
- When activated, a json file with the validation report will be saved alongside the PDF/A file. This report will inform about the validation date and time, whether it was successful and if not, which problems have been found
- Validation reports can be used to validate files before commiting them to a long-term archive to ensure files will be stillreadable many years in the future

Other improvements:
- According to the request of users to extend the Group Policy settings, now it’s possible to disable the Accounts tab and the introduction Window that is shown after an installation or update
- Similarily, you can make more settings in the registry. The time PDFCreator will wait to print a file (Drag&Drop or Command line), can now be changed under
- HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarepdfforgePDFCreatorSettingsApplicationSettingsConversionTimeout
- There is a new command line parameter /Merge you can specify multiple PDF and PS files that will be merged into a single print job and then converted by PDFCreator

Bugs fixed:
- Added a workaround for a bug in .Net that would raise an error while ending the application (TaskCanceledException), even though everything worked fine
- Fixed a bug that would declare lower case driver letters in paths as invalid (i.e. 'c:Temp')
- When using the E-Mail button, PDFCreator validated the target path even though it was not used
- PDFCreator Plus, PDFCreator Business and PDFCreator Terminal Server: The setup was not able to detect that HotFolder was still running, which made an update installation fail
- PDFCreator Plus, PDFCreator Business and PDFCreator Terminal Server: Downloading the update could have crashed if the download was performed multiple times
- Fixed a bug that could show an error message (NotSupportedException) during the first start of PDFCreator
- The ouput path was not correctly set when changing the profile during a print job
- PDFCreator Business and PDFCreator Terminal Server: GPO for application settings does not influence the printer tab anymore
- (Ready to Merge) The command line parameters /Printer, /Profile and /OutputFilename can now be used when converting PDF and PS files (see :ref:`CommandLineParameters`

Other Changes:
- Announcement: From now on silent installation is only available for PDFCreator Business and PDFCreator Terminal Server
- PDFCreator now asks to collect anonymous usage statistics to improve the further development. This feature respects your privacy and completely optional. Users will be informed transparently when the application is started for the first time


PDFCreator 3.2.2
- The GDPR comes into force and we made adaptions to our terms and conditions


PDFCreator 3.2.1
- PDFCreator Plus, PDFCreator Business, PDFCreator Terminal Server and PDFCreator Custom**: Downloading the update could have crashed if the download was performed multiple times
- PDFCreator Plus, PDFCreator Business, PDFCreator Terminal Server and PDFCreator Custom**: The setup was not able to detect that HotFolder was still running, which made an update installation fail
- Fixed a bug that would declare lower case driver letters in paths as invalid (i.e. 'c:Temp')
- When using the E-Mail button, PDFCreator validated the target path even though it was not used
- QuickActions do not reset for bug fix releases


PDFCreator 3.2.0
Making Good Things Better:
- The users gave us overwhelming feedback on the (optional) notifications we added to the auto-save mode for PDFCreator Plus, PDFCreator Business and PDFCreator Terminal Server. Clicking on a success notification now opens the file location of the created document in an explorer window, ready for your further usage
- In the last release we also introduced a history of your created jobs. From now on the creation date is already displayed in the main overview is a simple change but an absolute improvement
- Another thing are tokens. Using variable content for settings, has always been an essential feature for sophisticated automated workflows. With the cover, attachment and background we finally provide the tokens for all our settings

Default Viewers:
- To be honest, we had a lot of struggle to detect the systems default viewers for the associated file format. Therefore, it was not always possible to open a converted document (with the expected application). To solve this conclusively and for all Windows versions, you can now set an application in the PDFCreator application settings, that will be used as default viewer - individually per output format and with optional parameters

Proxy for License Service:
- PDFCreator Terminal Server requires to run a licensing service, which now supports a proxy server. It can be easily defined as setup parameter or configured in the registry

More Improvements of PDFCreator 3.2:
- Drag and drop folders to PDFCreator convert all files
- Detect too long paths, invalid characters and invalid absolute paths in profile settings

Bugs fixed:
- Prevent crash during uninstallation if spool folder is not empty
- Prevent crash of PrinterHelper.exe on update
- The auto-save notifications always took the settings from the default profile


PDFCreator 3.1.2
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 3.1.1
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 3.1.0
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 3.0.3
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 3.0.2
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 3.0.1
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 3.0.0

- Logo
- The first essential change is that the official PDFCreator logo has been modified. This is a big step since the logo is well-known all over the world. That's why we did not fully discard the logo - the typical PDFCreator flame keeps being integrated. Nonetheless, the new logo shows even better that PDFCreator is made for digital documents
- Another benefit is that now it's easier to distinguish between the different PDFCreator editions. The related version is clearly outlined by being labeled right aside the logo. By the way, the new logo is the result of an official design competition

UX:
- The outstanding innovation of PDFCreator 3.0 is a better User Experience: The user interface as a whole has been designed with the intention that the user can reach the desired result in as few steps as possible
- Both the private end user and the professional business user can easily perform the relevant steps they specifically want to take in order to perform the conversion process - regardless of whether this is a simple conversion or an automatic workflow including profound settings

New Navigation:
- The Home screen has got a completely new interface. We improved the structure and re-arranged tabs with the objective to ensure a user-friendly interaction and help you to get started as quickly as possible
- To more experienced users it may sound strange, but a common question was: I have installed PDFCreator, what should I do now? Simply Drag and Drop any file onto the Home screen will quickly start the conversion process. By the way: The preferred way is to print to the PDFCreator printer from any application that is capable of printing
- Where in the past the devision in "Application Settings" and "Profile Settings" might have been confusing for some users, now there is a clear horizontal navigation bar which is composed of the most important options such as Home, Profiles, Printers, Accounts as well as Application Settings and Help. We wanted to bring the settings that might to be changed regularly to your attention. We have also realized, that many users did not know about a lot of features that existed. Most features are placed more prominent. The settings button now only contains settings, that you seldom or hopefully never have to access (i.e. language, debug settings etc.)

Profile Settings:
- The Profile section is designed to define specific settings as a profile. The settings are now grouped by meaning (i.e. Convert, Modify, Send) to be aligned with the way PDFCreator is processing the document. The settings of the former „Actions“ tab are integrated there as well. The new arrangement allows the user to make the desired settings in the most useful and logical order. For example Auto-Save and interactive conversion are now defined as first thing when configuring a profile, as they define the behaviour of the whole profile. Settings that exclude each other are hidden or disabled.

Accounts:
- The main navigation includes a new Accounts option. It's the central place for accounts (SMTP, Dropbox, FTP, HTTP, Time Server). Once an account is configured it is available for all workflows. Retyping account information somewhere else is not necessary anymore. This is very helpful for users who regularly use automation and multiple printers. But you do not have to configure the accountshere. If you are configuring a profile and i.e. want to add a Dropbox upload, you can add the account directly from the profile
- PDFCReator Accounts Screen
- All in all, the new structure guides the user in an intuitive manner to make the settings. Important options are presented more clearly. The new interface now comes with large areas, icons and buttons indicating that something can happen at these points
- If you have any suggestions in regards to the usability we invite you to submit your feedback. Please participate in our PDFCreator Redesign survey

More Improvements :
- The merge window has been redesigned to provide more information on the documents in the queue
- The title replacements are now easier to configure. The logic also has slightly changed, as most users just used it to remove things from the print document titles. If you want to actually replace it with another value, you have to use regular expressions now
- Wherever Tokens are supported, there is a token button now to give access to the tokens available
- A new send action has been added to send the converted files via HTTP to a web hook
- Triple-clicking a text box will now select the whole text, even if it contains multiple words
- The defaults for the settings were reconsidered. We now use the strongest available encryption for PDF files by default and also have reasonable security settings. When a PDF is protected, the default is now to allow to open and print the document, but not to allow any modification
- PDFCreator 3.0 is available in 29 languages now. We would like to take the opportunity to thank all translators and to welcome the new translations Estonian, Hungarian and Romanian


PDFCreator 2.5.3
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 2.5.2
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 2.5.1
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 2.5.0

Increased Safety Level:
- A higher safety level is now available in PDFCreator Plus and all Business editions. We are very happy to provide 256 Bit AES encryption
- This is possible because PDFCreator is now including PDF Tools libraries. The Swiss company PDF Tools is member of the PDF association and provides the highly valued PDF Online Validator pdf-online.com. As Switzerland is world-wide known for best security levels, we believe there's no better way to rely on additional security tools being provided by Swiss companies. Using PDF Tools for signing, encryption and PDF/A conversion ensures the highest quality standards

More Improvements:
- Dropbox share link is shown after conversion
- Single share link (folder) for Dropbox allows upload of multiple files
- Translations are improved for faster loading, correct plural forms for languages with more than one plural and improved translation experience for our translators (link: translate.pdfforge.org)
- E-Mail Client Action keeps Outlook font settings (with enabled HTML)
- HTML support for e-mails via SMTP
- The PrinterHelper has been enhanced for a more stable installation, removing and repairing of printers

Bugs fixed:
- Better detection of Print/PrintTo associations for Windows 8 and above. This unfortunately was changed by Microsoft in an undocumented and incompatible way
- Refuse encryption of PDF/A and PDF/X (comply with standard)
- Use PDF Version 1.7 for PDF/A-2b (comply with standard)
- Thanks to your error reports, we could fix some unexpected exceptions


PDFCreator 2.4.1
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 2.4.0

Breaking changes:
- The COM interface has been moved to the file PDFCreator.COM.dll. If you are referencing the PDFCreator.exe, you now have to reference the PDFCreator.COM.dll. If you are using the object name, no changes will be required. The interface itself did not change.

Improvements:
- Dropbox integration allows to upload files to Dropbox and add shared links to your mails
- Default metadata: You can now define templates for all metadata fields including subject and keywords
- Business: PDFCreator can now extract user tokens from the source document and use them for the conversion. See User Tokens.
- Terminal Server: The licenses on a Terminal Server are now managed per machine to allow users to float between servers in a server farm
- We did a major architectural redesign, which will allow us to change this faster in future and also greatly increases the application performance
- Updated to Ghostscript 9.19, which seems to be the most stable version available at the moment
- When inserting a new license key, you can now optionally transfer it to all other users on the machine

Bugs fixed:
- Only certain characters are allowed in the Stamp feature. PDFCreator will now filter invalid characters.
- Sometimes a DirectoryNotFoundException occurred when converting a file. This should be fixed now.
- Title replacements were broken for the InputFilename token
- PDF/A files became very large and couldn’t use RGB colors. This was fixed by the Ghostscript update
- The COM method SetProfileByGuid did not work
- PDFCreator could not be run from a guest account
- The tokens NumberOfPages and NumberOfCopies could contain wrong values
- When settings were set in HKU.Default, PDFCreator would not initialize the profiles
- PDF Architect was always installed in silent mode
- There was a bug that caused the license check to fail on Turkish machines
- When converting jobs with mixed page sizes and orientations, they did not always persist. This was fixed by the Ghostscript update.
- Plus the usual round of small fixes


PDFCreator 2.3.2
- Fixed a bug with providing defaults for all users. If a few settings were present in HKU.DEFAULT, PDFCreator would initialize the user settings without profiles except the default profile


PDFCreator 2.3.1
- Change log not available for this version


PDFCreator 2.3.0
New product range:
- We have added exclusive features for PDFCreator Plus and PDFCreator Business users, but we have also experienced that the licensing could be a problem on Terminal Servers, as the licensing was performed on a per-user basis
- Starting with PDFCreator 2.3, the licensing on Terminal Servers has been optimized and you are only required to purchase one license per Terminal Server that is valid for an unlimited number of users

New License Tab:
- If you have purchased PDFCreator Plus or one of the business editions, you can see license details on the new license tab in the application settings. There you can also change the license key if required.
- You can also open the license server website from the tab, where you can manage your machines, i.e. when you have moved to a new computer, and renew your license or purchase additional users for your business license.

Improved Drag and Drop:
- The drag and drop functionality has been enhanced. It has already been possible to drag any files on a PDFCreator window to print and convert them. Now you can also drag the files on the PDFCreator desktop shortcut to convert files. If you want to add PDF files to your current conversion file list, you can simply drag them on a window as well, it is no longer needed to print them to a PDFCreator printer.

New HotFolder:
- PDFCreator Plus, PDFCreator Business and PDFCreator Terminal Server also include the latest version of HotFolder. It allows the creation of special folders on any computer, files added to these folders are automatically converted to PDF or image files using PDFCreator.
- The new version comes with a wizard that makes it much easier to configure a folder and will also configure PDFCreator if desired. Formerly, you can to do a part of the configuration in HotFolder and then move to PDFCreator to create the printer and define the auto save profile that will be used. This is now done inside the configuration wizard. HotFolder now also supports to exclude certain file types from being converted or to restrict conversion to certain files types only.

Better context menu integration:
- PDFCreator now integrates much better with the Windows Explorer. We have created a dynamic integration (a so-called shell extension), which analyzes the selected files and if there are printable files among them, offers to convert them with PDFCreator
- The old explorer integration was installed during the setup and determined the file types that were printable at that time. As this may change after ther PDFCreator setup, there might be file types that were not detected as printable or were still offered to convert after the application to print them was uninstalled
- The new shell extension detects this correctly. You will also be notified if there are a few non-convertible files among a large amount of files

Enhanced title replacements:
- We want to give you more control on how the title replacement is performed by PDFCreator. Therefore, you can now select how the replacement should be done. You can choose to replace all occurances of a given string (the old behaviour), only remove a given string from the start or the end of the title.
- For example the print job names of office products look like “Microsoft Word - Original Document Title.doc”. You can now remove “Microsoft Word -“ at the beginning and “.doc” at the end of your title. If you would have converted a document "my.document.doc" in the past, the title would be modified to "myument", as any occurance of ".doc" was removed.
- If this still is not powerful enough, you can also apply a regular expression. With regular expressions, you can do very powerful replacements, once you got used to the syntax.
- One user was facing a problem where he would have very long file names when printing images from zip files. The zip application extracted the files to a temporary folder, which led to very long file names as they contained the temporary path, the name of the zip file and the name of the image that was converted.
- You can find the solution to this problem in the user guide, together with an in-depth explanation of how the regular expressions work.
- Service to collect error reports
- To be able to contiously enhance PDFCreator, we have set up a service to collect error reports. Whenever a error should occur, you have the possibility to report the issue online. As we respect your privacy, you can review the information that is transferred before it is sent and it will only be sent if you give your consent to do so.

Other Improvements
- We added the total number of pages to the merge window to give you a better overview when merging print jobs
- If you are converting a file and cannot overwrite an existing file (most likely because it is opened by another application), PDFCreator requests a new filename instead of determining one with a number appended, which was our former solution
- Most printing applications do not provide the original filename (the original file path respectively). In this case the Token remained empty. Now we provide the original document title instead
- We employed a new designer who beside other things created a fresh new setup image