Questions about LHT Reader

Yes. Version 1 is free for everyone, for work and for home, with no account, no key and no time limit. When Version 2 is released, Version 1 stays free for personal use, for anyone working on their own account, and for organisations of up to 10 people. From the ninetieth day after Version 2’s release, an organisation of 11 or more people needs a business licence for each person who uses it. See pricing.

Windows 10 or 11, or macOS 15.7.9 Sequoia or later on an Apple Silicon Mac. Word documents are made into PDFs by Microsoft Word or LibreOffice; Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations by Microsoft Office or LibreOffice on Windows, and by LibreOffice on a Mac. If you have none of them, LHT Reader offers to install LibreOffice, which is free. To bring in web pages, emails and text files you need Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome or Brave.

Very little. These work on Windows only: hiding a document from screen sharing, and keeping the Notebook out of it; dragging pages, sections, documents and attachments out of the window; and exporting to Word, or putting pages into a Word document, which LHT Reader has Microsoft Word itself do. Word on a Mac would send the document to Microsoft to convert, which is not offline. The installation switches for IT teams are Windows’ too.

On a Mac, Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations are opened through LibreOffice, and so are Word documents with macros. Other Word documents open through LibreOffice or Microsoft Word; with LibreOffice their headings become bookmarks, while Word on a Mac makes its PDFs without them. Everything else is the same on both, dragging within the window included.

Yes. On Windows, Setup installs for the signed-in user alone, with no administrator rights, or for everyone on the computer, by an administrator, in Program Files. The choice can be made on the command line with /CURRENTUSER or /ALLUSERS, together with /VERYSILENT, for example from Intune or Configuration Manager. See installation for IT teams.

No. Registering a computer, with an email address and a code of six digits sent to it, is optional. It puts your computers under one licence, so that each can be told apart and managed from Licensing Information.

Yes. Click Default App in the status bar, at the foot of the window. On Windows it opens Windows Settings at Default apps, where Windows lets only you make the choice. On a Mac, LHT Reader asks the Mac to make the change, and tells you how to make it in the Finder if the Mac does not take it.

Yes. Opening, reading, marking up, OCR, converting, signing and saving all happen on your own computer, with or without the internet. LHT Reader goes online only for what needs it, such as bringing in a web page, adding an OCR language, registering a computer or checking for updates. Every connection it makes is listed on our security page.

33: PDF; DOCX, DOC, RTF, DOCM, DOTX, DOT and ODT; PNG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, WebP and HEIC; XLSX, XLS, XLSM, XLSB, ODS and CSV; PPTX, PPT, PPTM, PPSX, PPS and ODP; EML and MSG emails; TXT, Markdown, HTML, MHTML and SVG. It also brings in live web pages by their address. Each is opened as a PDF, and a macro is never run. HEIC photos are read by the computer’s own decoder: on Windows, Microsoft’s HEIF and HEVC extensions.

Eight: PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), PowerPoint (.pptx), text, PNG, JPEG and TIFF. Word documents are made by Microsoft Word itself, so exporting to Word needs Windows with Word installed. The Excel workbook, the PowerPoint presentation and the others are written by LHT Reader, on Windows and on a Mac.

As many as you need. We drag in 10,000 files at a time, and they are listed in the Files column, down the left of the window. LHT Reader keeps the most recently viewed documents open and closes the others as you move on, so memory stays in check however long the list. Try it with our speed test pack.

Download the speed test pack from the speed test section of our LHT Reader page: 10,000 generated files, a 632 MB download. Unzip it with 7-Zip or a similar tool, since Windows’ own unzipping is slow with 10,000 files, then drag the folder into LHT Reader and read the time in its status bar. Dragging the folder is the quickest way in. On our Windows 11 PC, with an Intel Core i7-13700, 16 GB of memory and an NVMe SSD, it took 0.69 seconds, as the video on our LHT Reader page shows. Your time will depend on your computer and its disk, and a second run is often quicker than the first.

Yes. Select it in the Files column and press F2, or right-click it and choose Rename. Windows will not rename a file that a program holds open, so LHT Reader lets go of the file, renames it, and opens it again where you were. Undo renames it back. Its ending, such as .pdf or .docx, stays as it is. If it has changes not yet saved, save them, or undo them, first.

Yes. Right-click a document in the Files column and choose Bold, Italic or Colour: its name is shown so in the list alone, and the file’s own name is not touched. You can also pin documents to the top, sort by name or date, filter by name, or drag a row up or down. Everything as Last Time brings the list back as you left it.

They are listed in the Attachments column, where you can open, save, rename, sort or remove them, or attach more. A document, picture, sound or video of the usual kinds can be opened, and is first marked as having come from elsewhere, as a browser marks a download. A program or script attached to a PDF is never started: it can only be saved. An email (.eml or .msg) opens with its own attachments listed in the same column.

Yes. Select pages in the Pages column and drag them onto another PDF in the Files column: they go in where you choose, as Insert puts pages in, with their bookmarks and page numbers. Let go on one of its attachments and they go into that attachment; on an empty part of the Files or Attachments column, and they become a PDF of their own. A bookmark dragged out of the Bookmarks column carries its section’s pages in the same way. On Windows, pages let go on a Word document go into it, put there by Microsoft Word itself, at its start or its end. A file dropped on the Pages column goes in at that point.

On Windows, yes. Drag the pages selected in the Pages column out of the window: a PDF of them is made at once, and goes wherever you let go, whether the desktop or a folder, an email you are writing, or a WhatsApp chat. The same works for a bookmarked section, for documents in the Files column, which go as their files are on the disk, and for attachments. On a Mac, Extract makes a PDF of the pages instead.

Yes. Tick the documents, or pin them, and choose Merge: one PDF of them, in the order of the Files column, each document a bookmark. Index makes a Word index of them first, with page numbers and dates, and the documents can be merged after it into one numbered bundle. To put only some pages of one document into another, drag them there.

Yes. Select both in the Files column, right-click, and choose Compare the two selected. The earlier version is shown on the left and the later on the right: what the earlier has that the later has not is marked red, what the later has is marked green, and every difference is listed in the Compare column. Words, marks and pictures are compared. How the words look, lines that are part of a page itself, and what is filled in form fields are not.

Yes. In File Options, tick Paginate and choose where the number goes, its size and colour, a prefix, a format such as 12 of 120, or Bates numbering. With Renumber, the numbers LHT Reader or LHT DMS wrote before are taken out first, and the new ones written; numbers written by another program, or printed on the pages, cannot be taken out. Apply to File writes a new file. Apply to Ticked writes every ticked document, either into a folder or over the documents themselves, a copy of each kept first in an LHT Backup folder beside it. Pages put in later are numbered 12A, 12B, or 12.1, 12.2.

Yes, once you save. Each redacted page is replaced with a picture of itself, LHT Reader checks that no text is left on it, and the words still visible are made searchable again by OCR. Until you save, nothing is removed and Undo takes a mark back. LHT Reader does not examine bookmarks, properties, attachments or the file’s name, so check those before you share.

Yes. Click a field to fill it in; Highlight form fields shows where they all are. For a form without fields, type on the page, or use the tick, cross and dot marks. Then place your own signature, or sign with a digital ID.

Yes. You can sign or certify with a digital ID, a .pfx or .p12 file of your own or one made in LHT Reader, and every signature in a document is checked. Both are done offline. You can also place a picture of your own signature, kept sealed on your computer.

Yes. Protect with a Password, in File Options, locks the new file with AES-256, and lets you choose whether whoever has the password may print it, copy from it or change it. LHT Reader does not keep the password, and a lost password cannot be recovered by anyone. A protected PDF is opened with its password, which LHT Reader asks for; Unlock & Flatten Annotations writes a copy without it.

Yes. Find looks through the document on screen, or through every ticked document, and lists each place it finds in the Find Results column, with the words around it. Highlight all marks every one in a single step, and Save the list writes them to a CSV file for Excel.

On Windows, yes: the eye beside a document in the Files column hides it from screen sharing, screen capture and recording, while the rest of LHT Reader stays shared. The Notebook is never shown in screen sharing either. Neither is available on a Mac.

Yes, on the document on screen, on the pages you choose or on every ticked document. Pages that already have text are left alone. Other languages can be added under Languages, at the top right.

Yes, with the computer’s own voices: a page, the words selected, or from there to the end, at the voice, speed and volume you choose. Auto-scroll moves the pages on by themselves, at a speed you set.

No. Every document is opened, marked up and saved on your own computer. LHT Reader makes only the connections listed on our security page, and none of them carries a document, a file name or anything written in one.

No generative AI. LHT Reader uses optical character recognition, which runs on your computer, to make scanned pages searchable.

Click Report at the top right of LHT Reader, or use our contact page. Nothing is sent automatically: a record of a fault is saved on your computer, and reaches us only if you send it.