Sunday, August 29, 2010

SOE2PDF – freeware to scan and convert documents to PDF


Over time some of us tend to accumulate a lot of books and documents which occupy too much physical space. An easy solution for this problem is of course to scan and convert everything to PDF format. Doing this process using a flatbed scanner is very time consuming and tedious, so many of us turn to scanners that have an Automatic Document Feeder (also known as ADF). Nowadays there are some of these scanners which automatically scan both sides of a page but the price of this kind of devices is somehow expensive for some of us, that is why people who have regular ADF scanners have to scan odd pages first, even pages afterwards, and then join everything together. It is likely that there is some freeware software on the Internet that already does this process, but sometimes we are bombarded with pop-up licensing windows, advertising and some annoying limitations such as scanning a limited number of pages only.

To solve all these problems I developed a simple piece of software named SOE2PDF, entirely freeware, that allows you to scan odd and even pages separately using an Automatic Document Feeder, converting everything to a single PDF document in the end of the process.

You can download it HERE.

You will also need the .NET 2.0 Framework, otherwise the program will not work. You can download it HERE.

I have only tested the software in Windows XP, so if you have any trouble or bug to report, if possible, I’ll be happy to help. There is no installer, just execute the file SOE2PDF.exe to start using the program.

The usage of SOE2PDF is quite simple, just follow the steps indicated in the program window:

  1.  Select a scanner (you can also change the picture type and resolution);
  2. Scan odd pages;
  3. Scan even pages;
  4. Generate a PDF document from the scanned pages.

Enjoy!