Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) has become such a standard for distributing documents that it's about to become an ISO standard. It's ideal for sharing documents you don't want people to alter, because unless you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat it's pretty much a read-only format.

We say "pretty much", because a number of programs have come along recently that can take PDF files and convert them to an editable format, the most common being Microsoft Word. Most converters cost between £50 and £100, but PDF-to-Word is just £12.95.

This economical little program - it's under 700KB in size - couldn't be simpler to use. It runs in the form of a Wizard; you set the path and name of the source and destination files, tick a few check boxes to set parameters and then the conversion starts. It only takes a few seconds to complete and you can then open the resulting file in Word; versions from Word 2000 onwards are supported.

Options are available to enter a password (if the PDF is protected) convert drawing primitives (otherwise no drawn graphics), convert pictures (otherwise no photos) and make the DOC file compatible with Word XP. This last option is in case the converted graphics come out too big, which they may do if your PDF was originally converted from an earlier Word format.

The easiest way to test out a converter like PDF-to-Word is obviously to get it to convert a document and compare the result with the original. Doing this with our test document, which contained a mixture of text and business graphics and both black and colour text, revealed a few shortcomings. The document was created originally from a Word XP file, which itself used Word's own charts and WordArt modules.

Some of the text came through in different styles (emboldened / not emboldened) and graphics were considerably more coarse and jagged than in the original PDF. The program is obviously making some conversion of graphics into a Word-compatible form, but in the process appears to lose resolution.

For comparison, we ran the same document through Nuance's PDF Converter Professional 4 and produced a Word document which bore still less resemblance to the original: the program made very little attempt to reproduce the graphics at all. So PDF-to-Word may not do it all, but it can make a better attempt than some more expensive alternatives.

PDF-to-Word works very quickly, but sometimes to the detriment of accuracy. Even so, it stands up well against other, more expensive converters and if your primary use is to extract text from a PDF in editable form, it does this well. It's a good alternative for somebody on a tight budget.