Convert .pdf to .doc files?

[dieselstation]

is there any software out there that can do this? i'm looking for something that can keep the layouts and tables and headings in the pdf format and make it look exactly the same in .doc format. anyone know of anything that can do this? acrobat 4.05 doesn't do it.

 

[Electric Amish]

You probably have to have the full Adobe Acrobat (not just the Reader), or whatever the software is that creates the .pdf files.

Don't know if there is some other "free" software that will do it.

amish

 

[vi edit]

Maybe some very high quality OCR(optical character resolution) software?

 

[TheGameIs21]

I'm 90% sure that the only way to do this is with the full version of Adobe Acrobat.

 

[bunker]

I have the full version of Acrobat 4.0 and just searched through the help files. As far as I can tell it's a one way thing. You can turn doc's into pdf's, but not the other way around. In all honesty, I don't see how anything could do it since a pdf is basically an image.

 

[vi edit]

AFAIK, the only way to get text out of a PDF using acrobat is if the PDF was originally a conversion from word over to acrobat. Assuming you went from word to PDF you should be able to open up acrobat and copy text from the PDF file back over to a word document using OLE.

The only other solution would be to use a decent OCR software to pull the text and dump it into a word doc.

 

[NateSLC]

We use the full version of Acrobat here at work quite extensively along with Word. There is NO easy way to go from PDF to Word. As vi_edit mentioned, you're better off with a good OCR package like OmniPage Pro.

 

[ABiohazard]

Not going to happen. I used adobe acrobat all the time. Based on the security settings there isn't any way to turn it into a doc unless you OCR it, but that's a pain in the ass in itself.

 

[NateSLC]

On the other hand, you can use the Text Select tool in the full version of Acrobat and do the Select All, Copy and Paste thing, but you can only do one page at a time and you have to reformat most of the text. It's not going to preserve any tables, tabs, indents, headers/footers, etc. It will simply move any text on the page and paste it will line brakes and basic font information. In fact, in my experience, it doesn't do very well at guessing the fonts either.

However, this may be a good option for you if you have a ton of pages to do.

Edit: Once you get it into Word, I would suggest selecting all of the text there and hitting CTRL + Space. This should remove all of the funky formatting that came across. Then go fix it up nice and pretty.

 

[CichliSuite]

Perhaps save the pdf as a set of scans, and then use those in an OCR program.

 

[konichiwa]

Some webpages that may be of use to you:

PDFZone.com (root)
http://www.pdfzone.com/products/software/tool_GeminiStudio.html
http://www.pdfzone.com/products/software/tool_Gemini.html
http://www.pdfzone.com/products/software/tool_Magellan.html
http://www.pdfzone.com/products/software/tool_fiopdf2txt.html
http://www.pdfzone.com/products/software/tool_PDFImage.html
http://www.pdfzone.com/products/software/tool_PDFix.html

 

[d0ofy]

Aren't PDF files just one big vector image? I notice that the text doesn't degrade as you zoom in really close.