How to Create Personalized Invitations Using Word and Excel

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Excel, Excel Template, Excel Tips, Productivity | 2 Comments

If you have ever had to hand write a whole bunch of invitations then I am sure you have had the thought “There has to be an easier way”. Well, if you have Microsoft Office then you are in luck!

Here is how you can create and print your own personalized birthday party invitations in Word from a list of your friends compiled in Excel.

First, create your friends list in Microsoft Excel. It does not need to be anything fancy, just a straight list of names, but make sure you split the first and last names so you can address people by their first name if you want to add a personal note.

OK, the characters in Futurama aren’t really my friends, but you get the idea, heh.

Start creating a new file in Word and select the template you wish to use. Word will download any templates you select that you haven’t used before.

The template I selected allows you to print a folding invitation, so part of it is upside down. This feels a bit weird to edit but you can trust that it will come out ok on the printer!

Now go to the “Mailings” ribbon, press “Start Mail Merge”, and choose “Step by step mail merge wizard”

The mail merge side bar will open on step 1 of 6. Choose the type “Letters”, then click the link “Next” at the bottom

Now hit the radio button “Use the current document” and, again, click “Next”.

We want to “Use an existing list”, the list we created earlier in Excel, so browse for the file where you saved it on your machine and select it.

When you have browsed and found your Excel spreadsheet containing the names of your friends, choose the sheet from excel (sheet1), and click OK to load up the names into the Word “Mail Merge Recipients”.

If you look at the screen grab below, this is how Word sees our friends list. We could remove some of them if we don’t want to invite them to our party, by un-checking the box next to their name. Click OK when you are happy with the guest list.

To add a greeting line right before the invitation text, put your cursor above the text, and click “Greeting line” in the panel on the right of the screen.

You can customize the greeting line with various options and you get a preview before you commit yourself.

Before you complete your invites, you need to do some additional text modifications. There is some place holder text you do not want to publish (I don’t know who this “Stephanie” lady is, and it’s not 2004 anymore!). Click Next when you are done.

At this point you will see what the final product will look like. We can browse through the different invitations for each friend. If everything is all right, click “Next” again.

All that is left now is the final step, which is to print all the invitations!

Obviously we used an example that will be applicable to nearly everybody, but the same principle applies to all mail merges, from sales letters to other kinds of invitation.

Do you use Word mail merge? Please share your experiences in the comments …

A Test Drive in a Prototype Electric-Only Car

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Ilan 
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Let me tell you how I ended up test-driving an electric car today. Yes, an electric car running on a battery and electric motor. Not gasoline or diesel. Not even a hybrid.

It all started last month when the company that will market these cars, Better Place, opened its visitor center to the public, and I decided to go there with all the guys (and gals) from work, to get some questions answered as well as to see the prototype vehicles. As a side bonus, I got to drive one of the prototype cars.

It seems that the visitor center is still under heavy construction. A D-9 bulldozer was moving mountains of land around, and many construction workers were hard at work, probably building more showrooms and infrastructure.

Some of you probably haven’t heard about this company and their electric vehicles (EVs), or about their business model. In short, their short-term goal (~15 years) is to transform small countries to EV-only, and thus make whole countries independent of foreign oil.

Sounds a bit pretentious? Well, their plan is very detailed and seems to be well on its way, at least in their “pilot” countries, Israel and Denmark. With the help of the governments and some private investors, as well as the European car manufacturer, Renault, this company seems to be headed for a revolution in the transportation energy market.

The electric cars

Let’s start with some details! I am a beginner physicist and a professional programmer, so bear with me if I juggle some numbers from time to time. The technical data was taken from the company and its representatives.

What we saw were prototype cars, which used to be regular Renault models like the Megane and Laguna, and were converted to electrical ones by taking away the gas tank, replacing the engine with an electrical one of 115 horse power, and putting a large 250kg 250Liter Lithium-Ion battery pack in the trunk.

They told us that the first consumer model (the Renault Fluence) will be available to customers during 2011. These models will be specially-designed, so that the battery pack is at the bottom of the car, just under the seats. An equivalent of a gas station will have a device to replace the battery pack in under 5 minutes.

A new, fully-charged battery pack (supplies 400V, and holds 24kWh) under average Israeli-driving conditions has enough juice for a range of at least 100 miles (160km) of driving. They did not know how much the battery pack’s capacity degrades over the years, but that is not too important because of the business model.

How it works for us, the drivers

Their business model revolves around customers becoming subscribers for travelling from place to place. You don’t buy the battery charger, you don’t buy the electricity itself, and you don’t even buy the car or pay for mechanical service. You just pay as you go, per mile, and that is it.

When you subscribe, you get a new car and free installation of two charging sockets anywhere you want (for example, at your home and at work). The socket is a three phase 220V 50Hz AC, just like the regular mains, with 5 leads (2 for communication). It seems quite sturdy and simple. I would say even the least tech-savvy drivers will be able to handle it.

Charging is done at 3kW and it takes around 7 hours to fully charge a battery, in a process carefully controlled by the car’s computer. It comes out as less than 8 hours because the car’s computer prevents you from emptying the battery completely, so it won’t die before its time.

The subscription includes as much charging energy as you like, and as many battery replacements as you like. The only thing you pay for is distance travelled. If you think about it for a moment, it makes a lot of sense, because the travelling distance is the most important thing you actually get from using the car. It will not cost you more if you use the A/C, turn the radio on, go uphill all the way, or choose to drive especially slow or fast (within the limits of traffic law, of course).

The tour guide told us that the price per mile is not yet decided upon, but that it will be competitive to what people are used to today. Most cars is Israel are either privately owned or leased through a car leasing company.

On the way back we did some calculations. I own my car, while my colleague leases his via our company. He drives a bit more than I do, but running all the numbers, we came to the conclusion that the total cost of travelling with either of our cars is pretty much the same. We took into account (for me) the price of my car, its licensing and insurance fees, and car value degradation, (and for him) his monthly leasing fees, and of course fuel for both of us.
It sums up to around half a dollar per kilometer, or 75c per mile. If their subscription fee would be around that price per mile, it would be worth it even without taking the environmental-ideological aspect into account. I know some people who would be willing to pay a bit extra for that noble cause alone.

Environmental impact

The company emphasizes the idea of saving the planet and repeats that idea many times in the videos we saw. Let’s try to dig into that:

An electric car creates almost zero air pollution when it operates compared to gasoline cars. It’s not a 20% reduction; it’s more like 99% reduction. And it also makes much less noise (more on this in a moment). But it still requires a lot of energy to make it move, and this electrical energy has to be created somehow. Creating it in a power plant generates air and noise pollution, but elsewhere… not where the car drives. The environmental benefit for highly populated areas like city centers is considerable. We will breathe fresher air, no doubt. But the question still remains: Does the system as a whole really reduce overall pollution in order to save the planet?

Israel is a small country and has very little spare energy to waste on charging cars. The total electricity usage on hot days (when many people turn on their A/C around the country) can reach 96% of all the power plants production capacity combined (10GW out of 10.6GW). None of the various power plants are nuclear, so all of them are big polluters. The few solar and wind plants (in the Negev desert and in the Golan Heights, respectively) are not producing much energy, if at all, and are mostly for research purposes. If another coal/natural-gas power plant is built just for the purpose of supplying enough charge to the cars, the environmental benefit of electric cars might be lost completely.

The company’s answer to this problem is a smart charging system which profiles users according to their usage. If a driver (e.g. an IT worker) parks her car at work every weekday at 9am and usually only uses it again at 5pm, then her car’s charge cycle will be delayed a bit, and it might be 1pm or 2pm before her car starts charging.

Another driver (e.g. a sales agent) who drives a lot all day, will get priority every time she hooks the car into the socket, because she needs the energy more readily.

On the other hand, if the first driver has some unusual urgent matter to attend to (say, she has to fix a problem in a client site), and needs to use the car at 10am, she can instruct the system to “charge me now” and she’ll get priority, as well as a more rapid battery charge.

This is an interesting mechanism, which attempts to utilize the grid to its full potential while prioritizing customers according to their profile and/or other needs. I am eager to see if this will work as planned and if it will be too much of a nuisance to users or not.

My colleague asked them about the reduction of noise pollution. The prototypes we saw were just as quiet as a brand new “out of the factory” car, but not much quieter. On the other hand, when the engine is under load (such as going uphill) you could really feel the difference, as the electric motor is much quieter than a screaming internal combustion engine.

We were told that the consumer model will be fitted with a speaker and a “drive-tone” (an extended word play on ring-tone and true-tone), so that pedestrians will notice it and be less likely to get run over. In other words, the sound of a car that we are used to, will be artificially generated for the sake of safety. This makes sense, but I believe that eventually, if the whole industry converts to EVs, this feature could be taken off (not in the following 10-20 years though).

I asked them about the environmental impact of dead batteries, and in the behind-the-scenes operation required to periodically charge as many as 2 million cars, assuming all cars in Israel are replaced with their electric counterparts.

As with any lithium-based batteries, their lifespan is limited to around 10 years. This is longer than your standard cell-phone battery because of special sealing techniques. However 2 million cars still needs at least 2 million batteries (plus spares for changing), so the dead batteries might pile up to become a serious environmental threat.

When a battery dies, its contents (the electrolyte, the anode and cathode) can be recycled just like any other Li-Ion battery. However, I am not aware of any such recycling plants for these batteries in Israel, and when I asked them about that, they did not know where the recycling would take place either. Nor did they know how much energy it takes to recycle each battery.

It will be interesting to investigate this further, because off-shoring the recycling process might prove to be not economically worthwhile. Meanwhile it would be a big loss for the environment if the batteries are not recycled.

The test drive

The tour included a lengthy presentation (around 23 minutes) which included a hologram of the lead entrepreneur Shay Agassi, as well as colorful eye-candy entrance of a model car. It was too kitschy for my taste, and packed full of buzzwords and slogans.

Then we finally got to see a prototype car up-close and even drive it for a bit. They would not let us look under the hood. Apparently their refusal has something to do with a contract with the manufacturer, Renault.

When not moving, the engine is dead-quiet, but I could still hear a small hum from some ventilator, even after turning the A/C completely off.

Driving the EV felt just like driving my gasoline-drinking car. The gas and brake pedals, as well as handling the steering wheel felt just like any other car. It also accelerated nicely; there was no sign of it being “weaker” than a regular car.

One difference was on the dashboard: Instead of an RPM gauge, there was a power gauge. The scale runs from around -50kW to +200kW. Don’t be alarmed, negative power is still not defined. The scale works like that because when you let go of the gas pedal, the engine works as a dynamo to charge the battery! The negative values are there to indicate that the power is used to decelerate instead of accelerate (hence charging instead of discharging).

Another difference is in the gears, as in… there are none. The engine can produce the maximum torque at any RPM, which means that gears are not needed at all. One gear fits all. This is also why there is no “clutch” mechanism either (manual or automatic). It does boggle the mind a bit at first.

So there you have it. I believe this is a start of a revolution in the global car industry as well as the oil industry. I have a feeling that this will make a lot of headlines in the near future, and I am planning to be an early adopter of this technology, if the price won’t be too high.

Want Microsoft Excel Articles for Your Site?

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Blogging, Excel | Leave a Comment

Over the last few months I have been guest posting like a maniac, but it is time to offer it up again, so if you would like some free content, check this out now!

Yoav and I want to write free articles about Excel for your website or blog.

All we ask is that we can link back to our site(s) in the “about the author” attribution box. Seem like a good deal?

If so, simply fill out this short form and we will be in touch via email if we have something for you. (If you have multiple sites, please fill out the form for each one).

Click here to add your details and be on your way to getting some free, expert content for your site!

We have already written guest posts for several happy site owners. In the past we have written about all kinds of topics but now we really want to focus on Cogniview’s core expertise which is making your Microsoft Excel experience happier, easier, more efficient.

Cogniview’s expert developers have already supplied me with some absolutely awesome Excel solutions and code to share with you, I just need somewhere to write it up!

While we can’t guarantee that we will write something for everyone, we will think very hard to see if we can come up with something brilliant for you, so don’t delay, fill the form out now!

Your PDF to Excel Conversion Story

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Yoav Ezer 
Filed Under Uncategorized | 150 Comments

Thank you again for your willingness to share your PDF to Excel conversion story with us. We would love to hear why you were looking for a PDF to Excel converter and how using PDF2XL worked for you.

We only ask two things:

1. No foul language please. If your feedback is not positive – that’s OK. In fact it’s more then OK, we learn a lot from feedback. But please… no foul language.

2. If possible, please write your story in English.

And that’s it. Just scroll down to the end of the page and leave your comment there. I am really looking forward to your feedback.

How to Reclaim Your Facebook News Feed

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Productivity | 1 Comment

As you make more Facebook friends you might find the random noise increases. If anything, many of the recent Facebook changes have made this more of a problem.

It is a strange thing when you might regret making and adding friends!

The worst offenders are the stupid farm, mafia, and so on games and applications that spew random irrelevant rubbish into your news feed. When those appear, nuke them!


What if the rubbish is posted by actual friends and not the games they play?

Worry not, it is possible to silence the worst culprits without banishing them from your Facebook altogether. Some people you want to hear everything about, others you are quite content to go check in on them once in a while – this is a good thing and nothing to be ashamed about!


When an offending message appears, mouse over the right hand side and a “Hide” button should show.

Click the hide button that pops up next and you can then hide that person from your news feed.

Next time that person posts a status update you will have to go to their account to see it.

Obviously doing this might be considered “too little, too late” – best is to block people at the source. While you can not predict who out of your friends will turn bad, at least you can only add people who you know, like and trust!



If you change your mind and you find you are missing finding out about your friend’s high scores or most recent virtual flock, you can always go back to the options and allow those “Bejewelled” status updates back into your feed.


Is the Trinidad and Tobago Government a Software Pirate?

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Yoav Ezer 
Filed Under Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Two weeks ago I was doing a vanity search for Cogniview’s name (for those of you that are not regular readers – Cogniview is the company that hosts this blog and the maker of a PDF to XLS converter).

Back to the story… I was absentmindedly browsing through the search results when I noticed something funny right after Cogniview’s Wikipedia Article…

Vanity Search Results

Well… It seems that for some reason, the Trinidad and Tobago foreign office was selling one of our products. And at a discount. Funny, I thought to myself, I don’t recall signing a distributor agreement with the Trinidad and Tobago government. And we NEVER sell at a discount. So I followed the link to see what’s up:

Eudi Pirated

Click image to enlarge

Apparently, someone at the foreign office of Trinidad and Tobago has set up a store selling pirated software copies. I kept looking around and found out that all the software sold on this site was either bought at “an auction” or is a discontinued product line…

Lies Lies Lies

Click image to enlarge

Well… I can tell you that we never sell software at ‘auctions’ – whatever those are – and we did not discontinue any of our product lines. Besides, I am guessing that Adobe didn’t discontinue it’s Acrobat product line and it’s still being sold at huge discounts on the Trinidad and Tobago software store -

All adobe products stolen

Click image to enlarge

Further investigation into the matter shows that the guys (or gals) at the ‘Trinidad and Tobago software store’ take fraud very seriously…

User Agreement

Click image to enlarge

I am pretty used to our software getting hacked and sold at a discount. That’s the price you pay when you sell software, I guess. But we found out that most people are decent and don’t go looking for pirated copies. (Either that, or they are afraid of the viruses that are installed along with those copies). But this is the first time an actual government office site was used to steal our products.

I tried contacting the Trinidad and Tobago foreign office several times but to no avail.

So… What do you think we should do next? Can we ask that the Trinidad and  Tobago official site be de-listed from Google? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

The Hidden Productivity Benefit of Slow Software Tools

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Productivity | 3 Comments

As a geek, I thought I would ever say this. But the day has come where I finally found a reason to be happy with slow software!

I know, crazy, right?

When we all want bigger, better, faster, more, to actually be happy something is running slowly seems … well, just wrong.

And I thought the same, until it happened to me.

Or rather, to my email.

This strange realization happened when I moved my email from an assortment of cobbled together solutions, to (mostly) Gmail. Or rather, Google Apps for domains.

Google has put out a cool software tool that allows you to upload your mail.app email up to a Google Apps email account. I took this as an opportunity to unify my ~10 years worth of email into one online, searchable, central database. Google search is very efficient, plus  the tagging and filters will be a real boon.

One weekend of uploading later and I had my email all ready and waiting at my finger tips. Awesome!

Turns out though there is one flaw I hadn’t considered.

Man, is my mail sloooooooooooow.

I mean, really slow.

Why is this happening? What is the cause? Could be because I am forwarding my chrisg.com email to the apps mail. Could be just that Google is a slow service. Maybe it is because their IMAP implementation is poor. Not sure yet.

What I do know is this whole slow mail situation has had a side benefit that I never expected.

When it takes ten minutes to get an email reply, I am less likely to get involved in email chit-chat, and I get more work done!

Previously I would immediately respond to any email that arrived within seconds, and again and again until the natural end of the email thread. I can’t do that now, the response times have been taken out of my hands. When I alt-tab to another application and alt-tab back there are no new messages waiting for me.

OK, yes, I should shut my email off (and that is probably the real situation), but being an email addict, I will take this solution for now.

Thank you slow email!

iPad Vs Geeks

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under IT | 3 Comments

I am a geek but sometimes even I get mad at the geek mentality.

You can’t have missed the bru-ha-ha over the Apple iPad.

Apparently it’s all wrong …

Now, some of that stuff I think will be present in version 2 (the camera seems pretty much guaranteed) but it amazes me how so many geeks think this product is aimed squarely at them.

Not for Geeks

OK, so the mighty Steve made a big play about it being better than a netbook, but in my view this has always been a Kindle killer.

It’s a colour Kindle that runs applications.

A computer Grandma will love

Regardless if you think this is an ebook reader (I do, but you do not have to agree with me), ask yourself what your parents and older relatives do with computers, or want to do. Think about your friends and relatives who are not IT savvy but would like to be more online for whatever reason.

Which of those things really need a fully equipped computer, operating system, or even multi-tasking? None is the answer.

Flash could help some of that, but it is by no means essential to the experience.

Geeks need not apply.

I think geeks need to remember that IT is not their sole territory any longer. When the iPod came out the geeks revolted saying it was all wrong, but those white earbuds soon became a badge of cool (something we geeks do not understand) and the geeks were silenced by sales data.

I’m not saying the iPad will be as big as the iPod. I am saying that the geeks need to butt out and let the actual target market decide.

Personally, I never buy version 1 of anything unless I absolutely have to. I’m waiting for the iPad 3gs like I did the iPhone ;)

Use Gravatars in Your Own Site and Software

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Software Tools | 2 Comments

Gravatars are becoming not just a popular addition to your website or service, but an essential part of making your users feel part of a friendly, welcoming community. You will  have seen the small smiling faces around websites, blogs, communities and web service software tools.

If you are using WordPress then Gravatar support is now built in. Other software or services might be supported too. When you are developing your own software tool or service though you might feel out of luck.

Well, good news! Adding Gravatar support to your own software is easy :)

A gravatar is simply an image hosted centrally at Gravatar.com using the following URL structure.

http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Where xxxx would be replaced with the unique identifier for the particular users Gravatar.

How to do you discover the unique ID for a user? Simple – the key string is simply the person’s email address put through an MD5 conversion.

So my Gravatar is http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/772bb0ad28f9cdd045aca3ac25500a12 which is chris ..at.. chrisg … .com, and when used, creates the following JPG image. If you want to convert an email address to an MD5 hash, simply use this helpful web service. Enter the email address, convert it, then copy and paste the result at the end of the Gravatar URL above, replacing the unique ID with your new one.

Most programming languages have an MD5 function available, for example in PHP you would use the md5() function:

echo md5($email);

.. to output the MD5 hash of a supplied email address.

You can also optionally add a size parameter in the form ?s=300 where the size is in pixels.

Eg.

http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/772bb0ad28f9cdd045aca3ac25500a12?s=300

http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/772bb0ad28f9cdd045aca3ac25500a12?s=300

And the winner is…

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Yoav Ezer 
Filed Under Uncategorized | 5 Comments

A couple of months ago, we celebrated the 4th birthday of PDF2XL – Cogniview’s flagship product. As part of the celebration, we invited you (our blog readers and customers) to leave a birthday greeting on the blog.

We also promised that the authors of the 10 best greetings will receive a $15 Amazon gift card. And that the best greeter will win a Flip Mino Camera. Well the party is over and it’s time to give out the prizes…

But before I reveal the winners, I’d like to say that we were really moved by your reaction. I’ve personally read the 190+ greeting several times and I’d like to thank you for letting us know that we make a real difference in your lives. It means a lot to me and the rest of the team here at Cogniview.

And now the winners…

Vaughn said…

“Happy Birthday PDF2XL! You deserve it because you have made my birthdays much happier since I started using you. You see, I have the worst birthday imaginable, April 15! Tax day!!! Before you came into my life I spend most of my birthday manually typing data from my brokerage accounts into Excel. Now just a few mouse clicks and my PDF reports are nicely transferred and formatted into Excel just the way the IRS folks like them. So you have not only reduced my procrastination induced stress, you have also made some revenuers very happy. I guess that’s a good thing, huh? Happy Birthday!”

Shawn Setnicky from the Sonali Corporation NJ, USA said…

“I’ve been using PDF2XL for awhile now. It has saved me MANY, MANY hours of time. Each year I get a list of about 8000 names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, etc. The only problem is it’s in PDF format, and not easily manageable. If you want a nice Excel format they charge you 25 cents per name! That’s $2000, I’ve done it three or four times now, you do the math. I’ve estimated I’ve saved over $10,000 using this software and countless hours.
Happy Birthday! Thanks for the great product.”

Raja Sharma from Assurant Inc., Tustin, CA said…

“Our PDF’s were wild, and our morale was low.
Then came PDF2XL, and our faces began to glow.

What took 6 hrs to decipher can now be done in 1.
Now for the other 5 hrs, we just party and have fun.

Thanks to you for this tool and I’ll put it to you straight.
I’ll recommend it to everyone, because Cogniview is great.

So for this 4 yr anniversary, it is my pleasure to say….
Keep “excel-ing” in what you do, and wish you a Happy Birthday!!!

Good Luck n’ Happy 4th Anniversary!!!”

Pierre Mantha from the Britec Computer Systems Ltd.,Toronto, ON Canada said

“As major integrators of Sage BusinessVision software, on a recent upgrade from a competitive product the client could only provide us with PDF files.

From everything from Customer Databases, Vendor Databases, Inventory Databased – all form of reports came in PDF format only.

PDF2XL saved the day (or really the month). Based on the volume of data there is no way we could have tackled this project without PDF2XL. What would have taken litterally months of work to rebuild new structured tables took a 4 to 5 days.

Keep up the great work Cogniview – A Happy Birthday and to many more to come.”

Kris said…

“The day you were born of your parents minds was the day the world changed forever! Happy 4th birthday PDF2XL.
You took a 12 hour job and made it into a 2 hour job by reading over 500 pages of cell phone activity and creating an Excel document that was sortable and searchable. You save my company at least 10 hours of work. You saved my client three days of reading, high-lighting and writing down the activity. And you saved her thousands of dollars to have someone compile the information.
GREAT JOB!”

Jenna Z said…

“Dear PDF2XL,
Happy birthday from a user
Through documents I’m a cruiser.
It may sound cheesy
But with your help it’s easy
And you’ve kept me from being a boozer!
Thanks for the time-saving, sanity saving help! Happy fourth birthday!”

Eugene Hashimoto Said…

“Happy B-day to you and the team. It is really impressive to see the list of customers who have written. Definitely a sign of you superior product and more so, you excellent client service. BTW, you can keep the $15 gift card if I win and invest it back into your company. We really need companies like yours to succeed.
All the best,
Eugene”

Dan Wilcox said…

“My head felt as big as the Liberty Bell.
My brain was smoking like the ashes from Hell.
I was pulling my hair
And was full of despair.
Suddenly I found PDF2XL
Now everything is just going so well
And I am always so eager to tell
How I convert all day long
And still keep going strong
Thanks to Cogniview PDF2XL
Happy Birthday”

Victor Guettlein said…

“Congratulations on your 4th anniversary.
What an awesome product PDF2XL is. Do you know how much time and money PDF2XL has saved me? Literally hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars! Plus it makes me look like a genius to both my vendors and clients. I am actually a genius, and owning this software is just further evidence.
Keep up the fantastic work and innovation!”

Tracy Duke Said…

“PDFXL2,
My job would surely suck without you,
I used to type for 2 days straight,
Then there you were like a soul mate,
Happy Birthday four years old,
To other offices your story I’ve told,
May you be downloaded for many more years
Resting the fingers and bringing good cheers.
Congratulations and Happy Birthday!”

Leisa from Cedar Rapids, IA said…

“Because of your product I have been able to be more productive in my job. What used to take me days to convert by hand now only takes me a couple of minutes. I would like to applaud you in your quest to make life easier for us who have to work with .pdf files. I love this software so much that I have told others within my company and they have purchased it as well.
You are unsung heroes in my opinion!! Who would have ever thought that there would ever be software that could transform .pdf files in a click of a button! Thank you so much!”

And the 1st place goes to…Peter Dallimore from Stanbridge’s Hobbies, Australia which said…

“Happy Birthday and THANK YOU. What a terrific product. For years I struggled to get my suppliers to send me their invoices as an electronic file – I tried and tried – I even offered to send them my Purchase Orders electronically – but no – they are a backward looking lot!!!! A little glimmer of hope – I bought a scanner and some opposition software to make my own PDFs of invoices – it did not work – that was a was of money. Then success came – I was able to get my suppliers to send PDF invoices via email and then I found COGNIVIEW – IT WORKS – SO EFFORTLESSLY – Last night after a long day at work I received into our stock system a 24 page invoice – 320 lines – from one supplier – it only took 20 minutes to receive into stock – all because COGNIEVIEW created a csv file that I could then import into my system.
Why am I so grateful – you let me have 2 hours extra sleep last night!

Thank you – PS I do not want the gift – the software is enough – and by the way – your support is fantastic too. With 90000 product lines and 250 suppliers you help make it all happen.”

Next Page →