Introduction
This guide is designed for system administrators and other IT professionals who manage PDF-XChange products. It aims to provide administrators with the tools and resources necessary to manage PDF-XChange products across an enterprise. The concepts covered in this guide assume a certain proficiency with enterprise technologies, competence in working with the Windows registry, and often require administrator's privileges to perform.
This guide is designed to be used in conjunction with the comprehensive online documentation for PDF-XChange products. It includes additional information on the use of PDF-XChange's administrative templates, command line tools for PDF-XChange products, and step-by-step examples of some of the more common administrative tasks.
The PDF-XChange products contain a wide range of functionality. The products that you choose to install and the licenses that you purchase for those products should reflect the functionality that you require. The software components of the PDF-XChange applications are detailed below. The table beneath the list displays which of the software components is included with each product. A list of the main features for each product is available on the product pages of our website here. Please note that some features should be managed during installation, while others are better managed post installation.
Software Components
•PDF-XChange Editor is the flagship product of PDF-XChange. PDF-XChange Editor is used to create and edit PDF files and contains a huge range of features and functionality, as detailed here. Note that there are two versions of PDF-XChange Editor:
•PDF-XChange Editor Plus includes the full range of functionality available for the product, including the ability to create and edit fillable forms.
•PDF-XChange Editor includes the full range of functionality available for the product, except the ability to create and edit fillable forms.
•PDF-XChange Tools is used to create and edit PDF files, with a focus on batch-processing capability. It is also used to create custom tools that can perform a wide range of operations, as detailed here.
•PDF-XChange Printer Standard Printer is a dynamic and feature-rich virtual printer that is used to print-to-PDF from Windows applications such as the Microsoft Office suite. The features and functionality for this product are detailed here.
•PDF-XChange Printer Lite is the lite version of PDF-XChange Printer Standard. It contains only the core functionality of PDF-XChange Printer Standard and is used to perform a simplified version of print-to-PDF. The features and functionality for this product are detailed here.
•Shell Extensions is a helper application that adds some of the features and capabilities of our products into the Windows file explorer. The Shell Extensions provide:
•Previews of PDF files as thumbnails and/or previews in the Windows file explorer 'preview' pane.
•The functionality to open/combine selected files with PDF-XChange Editor.
•Enhanced file searching via the iFilter search function, which extends the default Windows search capabilities to include the content and metadata of PDF files.
•Addin for MS Office is a group of add-ins for the Microsoft Office suite that add a 'PDF-XChange' tab to those products. The PDF-XChange tabs contain features and functionality of PDF-XChange applications and can be used directly from the user interface of Microsoft Office products.
•Office2PDF is a stand-alone application that performs unattended conversions of Microsoft Office files to PDF.
•PDF-XChange Key Installer (XCVault) is a stand-alone application that installs and manages the license keys of the products.
•PDF-XChange Updater is a stand-alone application that manages updates for the PDF-XChange applications.
Please note that the names of the products in this list are the names of the components as they appear in the installers. There is a difference between how some of these products are named in the installers and how they are named in our documentation and forums:
•PDF-XChange Tools is referred to as PDF-Tools.
•PDF-XChange Printer Standard Printer is referred to as PDF-XChange Printer Standard.
•PDF-XChange Key Installer (XCVault.exe) is referred to as the XCVault utility, or simply XCVault.
Product and Component Matrix
The table below details the Software Components included with each product:
PDF-XChange Editor |
PDF-XChange Tools |
PDF-XChange Printer Standard |
PDF-XChange Printer Lite |
Shell Extensions |
Addin for MS Office |
Office2PDF |
PDF-XChange Key Installer (XC Vault) |
PDF-XChange Updater |
|
PDF-XChange PRO |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
X |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
PDF-XChange Editor |
✔ |
X |
X |
✔ |
✔ |
X |
X |
✔ |
✔ |
PDF-Tools |
✔ |
✔ |
X |
✔ |
✔ |
X |
X |
✔ |
✔ |
PDF-XChange Printer Standard |
X |
X |
✔ |
X |
X |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
Note that PDF-XChange PRO is a bundle product that contains PDF-XChange Editor Plus, PDF-Tools and PDF-XChange Printer Standard.
This manual is composed of six sections that contain information on the Deployment Planning, Installation, Updating and Customization of:
•The PDF-XChange Updater (applies to all products)
A PDF version of this manual is available here.