Office documentation softwares can become as sophisticated as they can. However, when we just need to do things fast; we need tools that are easy, light, and simple to use. Below is a list of such freewares I have used for my documentation requirements at office and found nice. Check it out. Maybe you will find some of them useful. This might also be handy for SOHOs, SMEs, and professionals who don’t have the luxury of time, don’t want to buy heavy or hi-priced softwares, or just have limited system resources.

PDF Reader
1. Foxit PDF reader – Earlier whenever I needed to open a PDF file, I used to sigh thinking of the time Adobe PDFReader will take to load and open. Not any more. Foxit PDF Reader makes opening PDF files as fast as any Word file.

File convert
1. Cute PDF writer – With this freeware, you can convert any document or picture to a PDF file. Simply go to print and choose the CutePDFwriter in the printer option.
2. PDF2everything – Convert PDF files to Powerpoint and other formats. The full version of the software does not come free. They also have a Office2everything with which you can convert Word files to Powerpoint.
3. Media-convert.com – Online tool to convert documents, audio files, presentations, spreadsheets, etc. Lots of formats supported.

Zip file
1. JstZIPit – Extremely light zipping utility. You can right-click any file, and select JstZIPit to zip it. It doesn’t ask if you are using the trail version or not. It just zips and unzips. That’s all.
2. Krunch – Online file compressor and decompressor. Zip, rar, and gzip formats supported. Achtung!

Compress file
1. NXPowerlite – Remember how heavy our Powerpoint file sizes reaches to 50MB and above, when we include few pictures. You can compress Powerpoint files with this tool, so that you can easily email them to your clients or colleagues. For instance, my Powerpoint file of 50 MB went down to 3 MB recently and it was the best I could have asked for.
2. Stoik video converter – I might as well have included this tool in the file-convert category above; but since I find this very useful in compressing all the TV coverage recordings and emailing them to clients overseas, I’m including this one here. Of course, the media monitoring services nowadays do provide compressed video coverage if we want, but this comes handy, just in case.

Password-protect file
1. Folder Access – With this tool; you can right-click a file, choose FolderAccess, put in your password and viola – your file is locked. You can unlock it similarly. Pretty nice safe to keep your resumes or salary invoices handy

Hide open programmes from taskbar and screen
1. Mr. Hyde – Is your boss wandering about? Need to hide Orkut suddenly? Need to go to the washroom? Hide the windows you want from your computer screen and taskbar with one hotkey. Press the hotkey and you get your windows back.

Download online videos
1. FLV online convertor – Read this post on Digital Inspiration. This is pretty useful when you want to download online news and other videos from CNN IBN and other news websites, or just about any videos from any website.

Heavy file transfer
1.YouSwap.com – I was using yousendit.com until youswap.com came along, offering 1GB file transfer free of cost. Yousendit.com allows you 100 MB in its free service. How do these sites work? They act as free online storage system, so that the sender and the receiver don’t need to consume any space in their email accounts. When the recipient receives your email, they are provided a url from which they can download the file you sent. Need to send a heavy picture/file to the media or the client? Here are the answers.

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