Convert a PDF file into a Word File

[NMAR...@adobeforums.com]

Is there any mode to convert a PDF File into a Word File?
Is it Easy?

[Arthur...@adobeforums.com]

What software do you have and what sort of computer?

[NMAR...@adobeforums.com]

I have installed Adobe Acrobat 5.0 and Word 97 with a 2000 SO computer Pentium why?

[Arthur...@adobeforums.com]

Because without knowing what sort of software and computer you have we can't advise you on the best solution for you.

in my opinion the best solution would probably be to acquire some OCR software that will read a pdf file as though it were a scanned image and then convert it to word format. You will, of course, need to ensure that the software has correctly recognised the words.

As I understand it there are a number of OCR packages that do this and some of them also have trial versions available for free download.

If, however, your pdf file is simply a text file and does not contain too much special formatting or graphics you could just copy and paste from the pdf to a word file.

HTH

Arthur

[Aandi_...@adobeforums.com]

Different versions of Acrobat have different facilities. As well as
the OCR possibility, you should try Save as RTF. Sometimes this does
just what is required.

Aandi Inston

[William_...@adobeforums.com]

Arthur,

Why would you use OCR, unless the PDF was a scanned file? PDFs have basic text info in most cases and that info can be saved through the Save As feature in AA5 (Many need to download one of the plugins) or simply by cut and paste of text.

In both cases, the formating will be lost. Sometimes, one can retain the text and formating by saving as HTML and opening in WORD -- but it is iffy.

There are also some 3rd party packages that supposedly do the translation at a cost about the same as Acrobat.

[mk]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 02:51:38 -0800, NMAR...@adobeforums.com wrote:

>Is there any mode to convert a PDF File into a Word File?
>Is it Easy?

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MK

[Arthur...@adobeforums.com]

William,

I regularly, but not too often, use an OCR program to turn pdf files into Word files because it does maintain all formatting.

I fell over this feature by chance. Have been using OCR software for some time to scan documents into Word and found this "feature" in the software when looking for something else. I have found that when OCR'ing (apologies for the new verb) a pdf file I get virtually zero errors in the spelling and the formatting and graphics maintained.

The OCR software I use is available as a free download for evaluation purposes (limited to 15 OCR documents) or to buy for 129 Euros which is not, IMO, too expensive.

Arthur

[Patrici...@adobeforums.com]

there is a software on the market called PDF converter which instantly converts pdf files into microsoft word documents <http://www.scansoft.com/pdfconverter/>