Knowledgebase

What are the differences between the installation packages? What is the portable version of PDF-XChange Editor?

Note that all Installation packages mentioned in this article can be downloaded from your account page, or the relevant product page, by clicking the dropdown arrow beside any download button. Portable versions are only available for the Editor, (the Printers and PDF-Tools cannot be made into portable versions).

Installation Packages

Installation packages are available in *.zip and *.msi format. Our Website prefers to offer MSI installers, and will automatically recommend the correct one for your system architecture.

The .msi installers are smaller, as they only contain the data relevant to your system architecture. They also easily facilitate the installation of our products on a large number of machines - for example a company network. In most cases, the MSI is the preferred/recommended installation method. For system administrators, the MSI also offers much more flexibility and switches to be used via CMD.

The ".zip installer" download contains an *.exe installer with all data necessary to install applications on both 32 and 64 bit operating systems (Note it does not contain ARM64 data. Installers for ARM devices are only available in MSI format). The exe installation will detect the correct architecture to use and run the appropriate contained MSI automatically.

Portable Version

The portable version of PDF-XChange Editor does not require installation and makes no changes to the registry of the computer on which it is used. This means that it can be saved onto a portable device such as a USB stick and used in any location. All user settings are stored in the same folder as the application.