Nuance’s popular PDF editor and convertor remains a strong rival to Adobe Acrobat

Kofax Power PDF Advanced has been one of our favorite Acrobat alternatives. It boasts a comparable set of annotation and markup tools laid out in an intuitive Office-style interface, allows you to control access to sensitive content, and integrates with Microsoft’s productivity apps so that you can turn Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files into PDFs from the Office toolbar. It even leverages Dragon Notes, allowing you to dictate your comments into a PDF instead of typing them.

You can now open multiple files within a single pane rather than in individual document windows. It’s hardly a radical idea but certainly a welcome one as you no longer have to shuffle through a stack of PDFs to find the one you want.Now you can invite partners to collaborate on a document from within Power PDF using a Collaboration Panel that’s been added to the right toolbar. Participants can co-edit a document and see each other’s changes—each person’s cursor is distinctly colored and labeled with their nickname—in real time.

One major reason people turn to a PDF editor is the need to combine multiple documents into a single PDF. This has typically been an arduous process, even in Acrobat, requiring to you open, drag, and order the individual files, one by one. Power PDF 3 adds the ability to combine all currently open PDFs into one PDF with a single button click. It’s a huge time saver when you’re creating multipage reports and other long documents.

Power PDF Advanced 3 is available for Windows at $180 per copy. Volume licensing is available for large organizations. A Standard version that omits some enterprise features like redaction and eSignatures is $130. There’s still no separate mobile app, but the desktop version is optimized for use on touchscreens.Overall, Nuance Power PDF is a strong contender for your all-in-one PDF solution, allowing for easy conversion, editing, creation and management of your documents.

There are many resources available to learn how to use the program, and the help and support features (including online chat on their website) are solid as well.

Despite its limitations such as a lack of online or mobile version, it presents some unique features in addition to the standard range of functionalities you’d find in professional PDF converter software – the dictation functionality and JavaScript integration could put it over the edge for some users.The Advanced version of Power PDF already had a number of features that set it apart from its Standard stablemate, such as the ability to automatically convert documents into PDF when they are placed in a special ‘watch folder’.