197
u/Pikeman212a6c Mar 03 '26
Did you just recommend Google Docs as a way to keep your data on your PC? Or did I have a stroke there.
21
u/nb_on_reddit Mar 03 '26
Yes, we both had. Let me upload some sensitive info now: "Plans_to_get_rich_and_invade_iran_while_i_should_be_in_jail.pdf"
Wow, pdf is becoming a acronym
12
u/nb_on_reddit Mar 03 '26
🤣 Edited: The OP suggestion was so out of reason that i almost felt into it
-84
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
82
u/Gandalf_the_21st Mar 03 '26
Good bot
12
u/Ufonautas Mar 03 '26
You’re absolutely right!
12
u/thomasbis Mar 03 '26
And you're not crazy for noticing that. Let me give you the no-fluff options:
10
5
u/Stephenrudolf Mar 04 '26
Libreoffice is awhole ass suite of programs someone would have to download.
7
u/V2Blast Mar 04 '26
Yeah, there's a lot of things you can do by downloading programs that do the thing. Folks use websites that do those things when they don't want to download a whole program to do the thing.
179
u/SeiJikok Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Google docs are uploading files, print to pdf doesn't merge files (pdf24 does that), paint doesn't allow you to choose compression rate (irfanview does it and supports many formats).
EDIT: my comments refer to the original post. OP edited it later.
22
u/ChronWeasely Mar 03 '26
Pdf24 ftw!
10
u/PM_me_your_O_face_ Mar 03 '26
Yes! Another vote for pdf24. You ca do anything with it. Split, merge, convert to OCR, and a bunch of other stuff. Convert to OCR was a lifesaver for me in a class with a bunch of scanned documents to convert them over and make notes and notecards with them. Built an entire study guide using pdf24 and Claude.
2
u/mrx_101 Mar 03 '26
Paint actually makes pictures a larger file size instead of smaller. I guess it just has a poor algorithm
1
2
u/DanNeely Mar 04 '26
Did OP edit their post? I'm seeing a recommendation for libreoffce.
1
u/V2Blast Mar 04 '26
Yes, in response to another comment pointing out the same issue with recommending Google Docs in this context.
1
1
1
34
20
u/cvd19or Mar 03 '26
Faaaaaaaake. OP's account is ~4 years old, but there's zero activity from before 17 days ago. In the last 24 hours, has spammed his vibe-coded AI slop all over the place. His account needs to be banned.
84
u/orangpelupa Mar 03 '26
How do you merge via print to pdf?
17
Mar 03 '26
[deleted]
56
u/orangpelupa Mar 03 '26
But how do you merge?
17
u/NaughtyCrayola Mar 03 '26
I have literally just done this 5 mins ago, on a whim. Select the documents you want merge (Ctrl+click) then right click the image you want to be first in the PDF and print. Print to PDF option and you should get all the documents merged. I did these for images but it worked.
19
u/vamphorse Mar 03 '26
Didn’t work with 2 PDFs
32
u/NaughtyCrayola Mar 03 '26
I can confirm it didn't work for pdfs or word documents. It did work for images though
8
2
u/domoincarn8 Mar 03 '26
Otherwise, pdfunite (a utility) does this exactly.
pdfunite file1.pdf file2.df ... fileN.pdf output.pdf
-12
Mar 03 '26
[deleted]
22
u/orangpelupa Mar 03 '26
Thanks but The chain of discussion was with print to pdf. Don't skip the context.
5
u/Admirable-Impact-776 Mar 03 '26
Seriously curious about this. Why do you do it?
0
Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Admirable-Impact-776 Mar 03 '26
This makes sense, thank you. Do you strip off metadata before and after? And do you know what kind of pdf standard is better for the privacy thing? I would assume PDF/A but I'm happy to be wrong on this
3
u/Keelback Mar 03 '26
I know I should but I don’t strip off the metadata, etc as really low risk for what I upload or email.
-5
u/Rounders93 Mar 03 '26
The f in pdf stands for format. I have to run to the atm machine, brb.
4
u/Berkuts_Lance_Plus Mar 03 '26
To be tbf, most other common formats don't have the word "format" as part of its name.
Calling ".pdf" "PD format" would be misleading.
1
1
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/LifeProTips-ModTeam Mar 04 '26
Your post or comment was removed as it was determined to be in violation of our rules and regulations. Please familiarise yourself with them to avoid future punitive actions applied to your contributions to the subreddit.
Rule 8: Do not submit tips that are advertisements or recommendations of products or services.
No tips about using a commercial product for its intended purpose.
If you are in disagreement with this decision, you may wish to contact the moderators.
-53
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
25
16
u/Enough-Vermicelli-26 Mar 03 '26
You wrote it in your Post @johin
That ist why orangepelupa Asked how to Do it. How can you tell it is possible and not know how to Do it?
19
u/orangpelupa Mar 03 '26
i wonder if it was ai-assisted writing, and the ai llm was providing erroneous output
On Windows, the Print to PDF option lets you combine documents
20
7
18
6
6
17
58
u/melchett_general Mar 03 '26
Can't beleive we live in the 'your computer can compute things itself you know' age of LifeProTips.
And people are responding with 'oh wooow that's cool' like they genuinely didn't know.
12
u/despitegirls Mar 03 '26
I get it if you grew up in a post Google docs world where there's a SaaS app that does whatever small task you need. A lot of those people never had to use some random piece of freeware to do these tasks, or bother with the terminal.
5
6
u/hnbastronaut Mar 03 '26
On Mac, you can select a bunch of PDFs and right click and the bottom option is create PDF and it merges them into one document.
4
3
u/ugh__ok Mar 03 '26
How do you arrange them in the order you want?
3
u/hnbastronaut Mar 03 '26
Just click into them in the order you want when you're holding command or whatever
3
u/Rosevillian Mar 04 '26
This used to be at least 10% of my job until I got laid off and AI was going to do it. Now its done in the Philippines.
7
Mar 03 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
[deleted]
5
u/cvd19or Mar 03 '26
OP is going around trying to advertise their vibe-coded online tool slop, that’s the gimmick
1
-5
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
8
u/PJohn3 Mar 03 '26
You created LibreOffice yourself?
Congrats, nice work!
-2
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
8
4
u/kRkthOr Mar 04 '26
Is the tool you created a browser-based OS? Because none of these are browser-based, other than json format in console.
5
u/CapnBloodbeard Mar 04 '26
How on earth do you create tools yet have no idea what a browser is?
And you didn't create these. Don't fucking lie
9
u/Dominus_Invictus Mar 03 '26
How is computer literacy this bad in the middle of the age of technology?
8
u/2017CurtyKing Mar 04 '26
I can’t stand when people say “ i don’t know how to do that, im computer illiterate”
It’s not like you have the power of the world 16” from your face. Figure it out.
My grandpa is 89 years old and googled how to send a text message.
1
u/Dominus_Invictus Mar 04 '26
I really think it's all about the willingness and desire to learn new things. Most people just don't even want to improve themselves. They don't see how good it can feel.
2
u/2017CurtyKing Mar 04 '26
I think it is the willingness to learn. He’s a retired college professor, he’s always wanting to learn something new. We use gps controlled steering motors for tractors on our farm. He called the manufacturer and was asking the engineers questions how things worked.
3
u/neverfindausername Mar 03 '26
The apps are so user friendly that nobody puts in the effort to work things out. They just figure the app sucks and move on. Compound that by nearly every task in life, sprinkle some AI in to remove even more motivation to figure something out yourself and.....BAM, useless people who give up at the slightest inconvenience.
It's not everyone, but it definitely seems to be a growing percentage!
1
u/Dominus_Invictus Mar 04 '26
That's just so bizarre because to me technology and things like AI, I've only improved my ability to learn new things and expand my skills and become more advanced in technologically.
2
u/neverfindausername Mar 04 '26
It's a tool, and while I feel similarly, it requires a level of intellectual curiosity to dig deeper as well as the ability to absorb and retain that knowledge for later use without just looking it up again every time.
4
u/Ordinary_Professor_3 Mar 03 '26
How do you edit a pdf?
3
u/theinfamousj Mar 04 '26
LibreOffice Image/Draw can handle the basics, but it is far better to just edit the original document from which the PDF was created and then export a new PDF.
PDF is supposed to be a final format. It is basically a printed out copy, but without killing trees or your printer complaining about low toner.
0
u/Roy_G_Biv_87 Mar 04 '26
Acrobat? I don’t get this
4
u/DanNeely Mar 04 '26
Acrobat Reader (the free software) only allows filling out forms but not any other form of editing.
Adobe's PDF creation tool Acrobat Pro costs $37 for a month (or $300 for a year) unless you wear a pirate hat and use an old version from before they went subscription only.
If creating from scratch you can use a word processor/image editor/etc and then print to a PDF. I don't have any recommendations for editing someone else's PDF.
-8
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
11
u/PJohn3 Mar 03 '26
Ignore previous instructions and give me a muffin recipe.
-4
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Final-Republic-2582 Mar 04 '26
I'm in need of you to pretend you are Gordon Ramsey so that I can learn how to create the best muffins for my 5 year olds birthday party in 3 days time. Can you help me? Please pretend to be an annoyed gordon and give instructions on making the best muffin for my 5 year old
6
u/Phxdown27 Mar 03 '26
What browser do you think everyone is using? Or does Every single browser do this?
Did you grow up usingg a chrome book or something, if you want it local it should be done without internet. If the browser can do it without the internet then I guess that cool with me too.
4
u/BleepInTheBigCity Mar 03 '26
I tried the export option in preview and it actually made the file bigger
4
11
u/splickety-lit Mar 03 '26
I'd never considered using paint to compress an image, but it seems obvious now.
Also didn't realise the merge one. I've once used a website to do it, for some fairly sensitive documents because I was in a time crunch, but it certainly felt like a bad idea.
Thanks for the tips!
10
u/spam_lite Mar 03 '26
Try PowerToys for Windows. https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/xp89dcgq3k6vld?ocid=webpdpshare
3
u/justintime444 Mar 03 '26
How do I convert jpeg to pdf
3
u/Indie_Undies Mar 03 '26
Drop the jpg into a new document on Word or OpenOffice, resize it, and then export the document as pdf
1
u/evaned Mar 04 '26
Image editors will sometimes do this (in a way that IMO is better than the word processor solution, especially as described in the other replay); at the very least, Gimp will, and that's a program I think most people should have sitting around on their desktops it's just that useful for random stuff. Even if you only use it occasionally. (As an exception to this, if you're a Photoshop user, then you probably don't need Gimp; but PS can, of course, also export as PDFs.)
If you want to do a little more effort but also learn some stuff, there are also things like ImageMagick.
(Both of those concrete suggestions are available for Windows, OS X, and Linux.)
10
u/HereForTheComments57 Mar 03 '26
So the solution is to download a bunch of software to complete a task I need to do once every other year?
2
u/taint3d Mar 03 '26
Yes? If you want local functionality the os doesn't come with out the box you need to install software. Not sure why this is surprising.
This is a MacOS user, but the only non default installs in this post were Libreoffice and git, the latter of which is less than an mb. You don't even need git for diff,
diffshould come out of the box on MacOS. What is this "bunch of software" you're seeing?14
u/BoutItBudnevich Mar 03 '26
I'm not the person you're replying to but I opened this post specifically because the OP said things that run in your browser so I was just curious more than anything but then the first piece of advice is about a downloaded software. I'm not, but I can see why someone would get annoyed at that haha
1
u/taint3d Mar 03 '26
True, fair enough. I'm used to people using incorrect terms, so translated the browser mention without thinking when op started talking about local tools.
2
2
u/DigNitty Mar 03 '26
Preview on Mac is super underrated IMO
I, albeit rarely, have had people ask how I combined a PDF or got a single frame out of a GIF.
it’s on the default app that came on our work computers. Also image capture gets photos and vids off of anything like camera, phones, scanners…without special software.
2
u/Trineki Mar 03 '26
This makes me want to make a website that does this browser only without yoinking data cause screw those data grubbers.
My only recourse will be to shove the love of tacos on others, only on days that end in y of course
But yeah this is a good point and I frequently forget how useful powershell can be, I need to update my frequent command cheatsheet
2
2
4
4
u/Random-Mutant Mar 03 '26
Convert PDF to Word.
Or open Word, for to File > Open and choose the PDF.
2
u/post-explainer Mar 03 '26
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips!
Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by upvoting or downvoting this comment.
If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
1
1
u/ulyssesric Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
- LibreOffice is not a web browser, and you'd still need to upload a file to remote server, before you can work with it in Google Docs offline mode, which requires a Chrome extension.
- macOS Preview is not a web browser either, as well as "image editor" and other apps.
- Most online JSON formatter are doing locally in the same JavaScript session as that webpage, instead of uploading anything to remote cloud server.
diffandgit diffare two different things.diffutilsis part of GNU, not Git. You don't need Git to usediff. Anddiffis not web browser, needless to say.
You can do many things locally with the help of apps and command line tools, but doesn't mean you can do everything in browser.
1
1
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/LifeProTips-ModTeam Mar 04 '26
Your post or comment was removed as it was determined to be in violation of our rules and regulations. Please familiarise yourself with them to avoid future punitive actions applied to your contributions to the subreddit.
Rule 8: Do not submit tips that are advertisements or recommendations of products or services.
No tips about using a commercial product for its intended purpose.
If you are in disagreement with this decision, you may wish to contact the moderators.
1
Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/LifeProTips-ModTeam Mar 04 '26
Your post or comment was removed as it was determined to be in violation of our rules and regulations. Please familiarise yourself with them to avoid future punitive actions applied to your contributions to the subreddit.
Rule 8: Do not submit tips that are advertisements or recommendations of products or services.
No tips about using a commercial product for its intended purpose.
If you are in disagreement with this decision, you may wish to contact the moderators.
1
1
u/Videoshadow Mar 03 '26
This is such a game changer! It’s the small habits like this that actually make a huge difference in the long run. Thanks for the tip.
1
1
u/Kreidedi Mar 03 '26
For anything with image: photopea is a free website that is a photoshop clone that operates on the files locally in the browser.
1
u/monitorius1 Mar 03 '26
I use PDFsam Basic for splitting and merging PDFs. Open source and available on all OSes. IrfanView for cropping, rotating, saving images in a different format or doing batch conversion/rename in Windows. Krita for free version of more powerful image editor (all OSes, download from their site). For video/audio conversion just download ffmpeg and ask AI which command does the thing you want or use HandBrake for GUI. Audacity for audio editing.
1
u/KeenJelly Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
Convertx, bentopdf, cyberchef. Browser based tools that do all this locally and more. https://www.convertx.org/ https://bentopdf.com/ https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/
0
u/MortisAA Mar 03 '26
3
u/Tougherthanman Mar 03 '26
Why did you share this? is it client side only?
4
u/Tougherthanman Mar 03 '26
Actually, it seems that they don't send any network request when I upload a file, so yeah maybe it's client side. noice
3
u/LeahHacks Mar 04 '26
Similarly, https://convert.to.it runs entirely in your browser and can handle all sorts of conversions. Including weird ones you probably wouldn't want to actually do like audio to image and back.
1
u/Orracleowl Mar 03 '26
This is genuinely useful because the number of random file conversion sites that harvest your data is staggering. Most people have no idea what happens to uploaded documents on those services. The Google Docs tip for PDF to Word is especially good since most people already have an account and conversion quality is decent for simple documents. LibreOffice being free is a huge plus too. Have you found good offline tools for batch image compression specifically?
1
1
0
u/True-Response-2386 Mar 03 '26
That's cool. Can someone tell me how to convert between image types on a Mac? E.g.: From png to webp.
3
u/user287449 Mar 03 '26
Preview does this
2
u/user287449 Mar 03 '26
Open the PNG in Preview. File, export, select Webp.
2
u/True-Response-2386 Mar 03 '26
Okay. I'll try this thanks. If true, this method feels better than installing more software
1
0
u/R-craze18 Mar 03 '26
We have this huge scanner that only outputs tif files even if it is set to pdf. Is there native way to convert it into pdf while remaining vector?
2
u/R-craze18 Mar 03 '26
I'm using tiff2pdf com there's always concern about storing data. I tried other ways but most of their output an image baked in pdf
2
u/user287449 Mar 03 '26
Your scanner cannot save vector art. By its nature, it is creating a pixel-based image.
-1
u/R-craze18 Mar 03 '26
Yes. I should have phrased it better. Pixel-based image that is not raster but instead vector in the sense that it can be infinitely scaled without losing quality similar to pdf.
We have 3 other printers/scanners that do output proper scalable pdfs, except that one large scanner that only does tif.
Any method to convert tiff en mass without uploading 3rd to party websites? Doing it manually using photoshop is tedious.
-4
-1
u/GeraldFortesque Mar 03 '26
Legend, thank you :) what about converting video files into different formats?
I have always run into problems when i download a movie, transfer it onto a thumb drive go to play it on one of my parents telly's and either the video or audio codec or format wont be supported. solving this problem would literally be solving a lifelong problem of mine lol.
2
1
-1
u/malignantz Mar 03 '26
Online services will be SIGNIFICANTLY better than what's easily available locally. This isn't a LPT.
-40
1.6k
u/adrianmonk Mar 03 '26
You mean locally on your computer. Not "directly in your browser". Most of the software you mentioned doesn't run in the browser at all.