Summary: The newly released Wondershare PDFelement 8 now comes with integrated cloud storage, an online electronic signature platform, an enhanced UI, and blazing-fast performance that beats the older version by 300%. Overall, a comprehensive solution for PDF workflow management.
PDF is one of the most commonly used formats in the world today, not only in business but also in our personal lives. Whether it’s a company-circulated document, a bill from the utility company, or a book we want to read on our tablets, PDF is all around us. That’s why individuals and companies need a capable PDF editor with rich features that can handle practically any task thrown at it, whether it’s simple text editing or extracting data from forms in bulk.
PDFelement 8 for Windows contains all the tools you need to manage a PDF document, including editing, conversion, protection, organizing, forms management, performing OCR or optical character recognition analysis, and processing files in bulk.
Most of these features have been carried over from the previous version but with a slightly different and smoother look. The faster performance is almost palpable, especially when opening very large documents. The interface is more responsive than ever and the clean look will be very appealing to new and experienced users alike.
System Requirements
- 64-bit Windows
- Available Disk Space: 500MB or more
- RAM: 512MB RAM or more
- Processor: 1GHz or more
PDFelement 8 Review
The latest in a long line of robust PDF editors from Wondershare, PDFelement 8 brings a lot of useful enhancements to the PDF experience. If you’re already using PDFelement 7 or an earlier version, all it takes is a simple upgrade to get the new version. It comes with several new capabilities, of course, but it also brings all the great features from previous iterations, such as speed, simplicity of design, and the focus on user experience. Most PDF users look to Adobe Acrobat as the premier PDF tool. While that is certainly true, there are millions of users who need a more affordable solution that has a more gentle learning curve. PDFelement fits that description perfectly, and with PDFelement 8 comes a powerful new software application that offers even more value as an Acrobat alternative.
The following sections talk about some of the different aspects of the software and our overall experience with it.
Installation and Initial Impression of the User Interface
The installation process is very simple. Simply download the installer package from the official PDFelement 8 website and run it to install the program. It shouldn’t take longer than a few minutes, and the first time you start it up, it’ll take a little longer than usual because the cache and other files need to be set up. Now let’s see what’s new in details of Wondershare PDFelement 8.
Performance
Once you get it going, though, you’ll find that it is impressively fast. The app itself starts up in 1 second or less, and you can open a document in half a second! It’s also lighter on your system, using only 40MB of boot space.
New Look for the Toolbar
The ribbon-style toolbar is much more efficient when you’re working with documents, and each tool is easily identifiable by its icon and label. It helps you click through the tools in a faster way, thereby speeding up your workflow.
Higher Resolution
Another major improvement is the higher screen resolution. A higher resolution means greater clarity, especially on monitors that support 4K content. It also means less eye strain when you work for hours at your computer.
Accessibility of Tools
The top-level menu gives you quick access to a wide range of functions and is prominently visible at the top. This makes navigation much simpler and is a major time-saver.
Cleaner UI
The UI is also a dramatic change from the earlier version. Instead of large modules for each main function, PDFelement 8 offers a single line of icons for frequently-used tasks, such as opening a file, converting from PDF, creating PDF from other formats, performing OCR, organizing your files, and so on. The software features new iconography and a refreshed color scheme as well, giving you an immediate clue to the minimalistic theme behind the new design.
When you open a file, you see the uncanny resemblance to an Office application. We believe that’s an intentional move by the company to offer users a more native experience on Windows, and we certainly hope to see how they do that for macOS when the Mac version of PDFelement 8 comes out.
The tool layout has also been given a makeover. Anything redundant or ambiguous has been moved out of the way, and all you’re left with is a clear and easily navigable set of toolbars that are intuitive and very contextual in nature. The buttons are neatly labeled, which is much better than the older version, where you sometimes had to mouseover for the tooltip to see what a button does.
New Features in PDFelement 8
Of course, the UI is one of the biggest changes in the latest PDFelement version but it’s not necessarily the best one. We believe that accolade should go to the integration of cloud storage and online electronic signature capabilities. These two features might seem quite disparate but they both achieve the same goals – greater productivity and higher efficiency for the user.
The cloud storage feature is actually an extension of the limited compatibility with cloud services we saw in the older version, but it now comes with a homegrown cloud storage solution with about 100GB of space allocated to each user. In addition, you can still access files from Drive and Dropbox, as with the previous version.
The star of the show is the e-signing feature. Built into a product known as Document Cloud, the digital signature feature not only lets you sign documents from any connected device but also send PDFs to other users to sign. Combined with the cloud aspect, this is a very powerful feature for businesses. Whether you’re circulating a contract among multiple signatories or getting acknowledgments from your employees for a new HR policy change, the tool allows you to send personalized email notifications to each of the signers and then track the progress as each document goes on its digital signature journey.
Merging the New with the Old
These new features are game-changers when you put them all together. A better UI, faster performance, cloud integration, and online electronic signature capabilities – all aimed at maximizing a business’s efficiency and making it more nimble when it comes to document management.
But that’s not the best part. PDFelement 8 also retains some of the best features from previous editions, such as comprehensive editing capabilities that allow you to control every element of a PDF document, an accurate and powerful conversion engine that maintains the integrity of the content, robust security tools to safeguard your information, a full range of tools to manage PDF forms and other formats, and the ability to process large workloads in a short amount of time with the batch process feature.
Put together, the new features enmeshed with the old give a completely new experience for users of PDFelement 8. The new software is literally changing the way people handle PDF documents, putting control back into their hands and removing all the unwanted complexity.
How to Use PDFelement 8
Along with the rehashed interface is the ability to navigate through the software in a smoother manner even if you’re a new user. The new interface is far more intuitive so you know exactly where to go for which PDF task. You can easily switch from editing text to adding a watermark to redacting content to performing OCR because the tools are laid out in an organized manner.
To get started, click the Open File button on the home page and import a document to be edited. You can also just drag a document over to the software window and drop it in there, which is a handy feature that also works when converting other formats to PDF. If you have an excel sheet to be converted to PDF, just drag it over and drop it. You’ll see that the conversion quality is superb and the table and data layouts are preserved almost exactly as in the original, which is another unique feature in PDFelement 8.
You can also use the Combine PDF button to merge multiple documents, and there’s even a feature that will automatically create a new index or table of contents page at the beginning to show you which source documents the merged file contains. To use this feature, go back to the home page and click the Combine PDF icon, which will open a window where you can import multiple PDF files and reorder them before you merge them. That’s also where you’ll see the option for the index page.
For OCR, there’s really nothing to do except open a scanned PDF file. The software will automatically detect non-editable text and prompt you to perform OCR, at which point you can choose between conversion to an editable format or a searchable format.
All other functions are equally straightforward and we didn’t have any trouble finding what we needed, whether it was a security feature, form data extraction, or even batch processes.
In Conclusion
If PDF documents are a significant part of your daily tasks, then PDFelement 8 can help you become more efficient and more productive. As a standalone product, you can get it for as little as $59/year or $69 for a one-time perpetual license for the Standard version, and $79/year or $129 for a perpetual license for the Professional version. The Document Cloud bundle costs $153.99 and includes PDFelement for Windows/Mac, PDFelement Pro for iOS, and Document Cloud. See the comparison between PDFelement 8 Std and Pro
At those prices, the features look even more attractive. When you weigh the cost of ownership or subscription against capabilities that come very close to expensive tools like Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, it’s clear that Wondershare focuses on maximizing the value of each dollar you spend.
Special pricing during the launch period, up to 50% off>>
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