To Text Converter 4+

I have an iOS app that works with Dropbox but is very picky about what kind of text files it will take, so I was looking for a Mac app that will batch convert a folder full of files to plain .txt. Unfortunately, this app also appears to be picky about what types of files it will take, as files that are easily opened in Apple’s TextEdit DO NOT WORK with this app, returning the message, “Unable to extract any text...". I wish there was a “try before you buy” feature on the Mac App Store.

This text does not do what is promised on the most basic level - convert files into clean, "plain" text. I used it to convert thousands of documents, and while it appeared to work on the surface, digging deeper revealed a major flaw: in inserted a phantom (or "gremlin," or "invisible") character in-between EVERY SINGLE LETTER of the file it was converting. This is a HUGE problem for a bunch of reasons, the most basic for someone who is a writer (like me) is that it throws your word counts off by the thousands. 100 word files were coming up with 1000+ word count.

Luckily, I was able to fix this through TextWrangler, but I shouldn't have had to. This is hastily-developed abandonware to be avaoided at all costs.

First, I went to the website to see if there was a demo (I always do this because there are no MAS demos). Downloaded the demo worked fine. The negative is that it just has a nebulus way of saying that it supports some files. It turns out the demo is only good for .rtf and .rtfd.

The demo will not work with .htm, .html, .pdf. It would have been a nice gesture of the developer to let the user know that.

However, the demo did work enough to convince me to buy it (special price helped too :) )

To test the full version I selected two .pdfs (one 58p and another 9p-the TTC user guide) and one .html page. Dragged the three documents to the TTC window and a-batta-bing-batta-boom, everything was converted within one or two eye blinks..I mean it was fast.

The draw back (where the 4-stars come in) is that under the "Details" window it said it Processed "3" which it did but only one document was availble to view. I'm guessing the last one to be processed was shown. So the Details only shows "ONE" processed document at a time. Lucky I was using the Desktop as the "destination".

Other than that, I'm quite happy with this and will notify the developer so TTC will show "ALL" documents processed when you do a multi-document one-time process.

And finally, this is a "text" only converter. Any pictures, .jpg, .gifs etc will not be converted.