PDF & documents posts

Merging, OCR, pulling tables into Excel and redaction.

Two lines of the same Turkish company name: garbled as Þirket Kaþýðý by a code-page mix-up, and decoded correctly as Şirket Kaşığı.

Microsoft Publisher is retired: how to open your .pub files now

Publisher leaves Microsoft 365 on 1 October 2026. Who is affected, which options still open .pub files, and how to convert a whole archive to PDF.

September 30, 2026

A comparison table of six apps, Word, PowerPoint, Canva, Affinity, Scribus and LibreOffice Draw, with columns for price, learning curve and .pub import.

PDF & documents7 min read

Publisher alternatives in 2026 and how to move your work

Word, PowerPoint, Canva, Affinity, Scribus and LibreOffice Draw compared on price, learning curve and .pub import, plus a step-by-step plan to move your files.

September 30, 2026

A laptop showing a spreadsheet with a small results table, a bar chart and a pie chart, next to a tablet held in one hand.

PDF & documents6 min read

Getting tables out of a PDF and into Excel

A PDF has no cells, only positioned glyphs. How extractors infer columns from ruling lines and x coordinates, where that fails, and how to verify the result.

September 18, 2026

A printed worksheet with ruled boxes and small red headings lying on a wooden desk, a pen resting across it.

PDF & documents6 min read

What decides OCR quality on a scanned PDF

OCR accuracy is set by the image, not the engine: resolution, binarisation, skew, compression artefacts, language data and layout. Plus how to judge the output.

September 18, 2026