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help!! free version of a PDF to Word/RTF converter?

L

LordSnailz

Diamond Member
Title says it all - is there a free version of a PDF to text or word format?
No frills or thrills, just a simple converter?
 
I've tried virtually all the programs that convert PDF to other formats, free or not. No matter what you use you'll end up with a jumbled mess, especially if there are a lot of graphics, tables, and bulleted/indented text. PDFs don't contain much in the way of text/style/paragraph metadata that translates into other formats so you'll end up having to reformat the document in Word anyway.

It's great converting to PDF. Trying to convert back is a nightmare. Your best bet is to snag the text in plain text format from the PDF and copy/import it into a Word doc and then format it manually. It's actually easier than dealing with the convoluted mess a converter will leave you with.
 
Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken
I've tried virtually all the programs that convert PDF to other formats, free or not. No matter what you use you'll end up with a jumbled mess, especially if there are a lot of graphics, tables, and bulleted/indented text. PDFs don't contain much in the way of text/style/paragraph metadata that translates into other formats so you'll end up having to reformat the document in Word anyway.

It's great converting to PDF. Trying to convert back is a nightmare. Your best bet is to snag the text in plain text format from the PDF and copy/import it into a Word doc and then format it manually. It's actually easier than dealing with the convoluted mess a converter will leave you with.
Click to expand...


Thanks for sharing this because I have been searching for something, anything that will concert PDFs to Word documents, etc. It seems there is a lot of promise but little successful offerings.

YastesLikeChicken, one question. Have you had experience with Abbyy's Transformation 2.0? Abbyy has excellent products and I was wondering if their converter really does what they claim. Thanks.
 
you could always use some OCR program to capture the text and send it to MS Word. You'd have to handle a long .pdf file by reading individual pages which would be a pita, but for a short .pdf file with not too many pages it'd be OK.

If you have MS Office 2007, its Office Tools includes Microsoft Office Document Scanning which does that very well. Or there's Abbyy FineReader or lots of other brands of good OCR applications.

I'm not sure if you'd need a flatbed scanner or if you could just have the software read the file from your computer desktop.
 
Originally posted by: Ultralight
Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken
I've tried virtually all the programs that convert PDF to other formats, free or not. No matter what you use you'll end up with a jumbled mess, especially if there are a lot of graphics, tables, and bulleted/indented text. PDFs don't contain much in the way of text/style/paragraph metadata that translates into other formats so you'll end up having to reformat the document in Word anyway.

It's great converting to PDF. Trying to convert back is a nightmare. Your best bet is to snag the text in plain text format from the PDF and copy/import it into a Word doc and then format it manually. It's actually easier than dealing with the convoluted mess a converter will leave you with.
Click to expand...


Thanks for sharing this because I have been searching for something, anything that will concert PDFs to Word documents, etc. It seems there is a lot of promise but little successful offerings.

YastesLikeChicken, one question. Have you had experience with Abbyy's Transformation 2.0? Abbyy has excellent products and I was wondering if their converter really does what they claim. Thanks.
Click to expand...
That's one I haven't heard of and haven't tried out yet. I'm downloading it now and I'll test it on a simple PDF that was created in Word 07 in the first place. If it can handle that I'll try it on a more difficult PDF and let you know what I think of it.

If this works decently it would be the first one I've run across that does.
 
Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken
Originally posted by: Ultralight
Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken
I've tried virtually all the programs that convert PDF to other formats, free or not. No matter what you use you'll end up with a jumbled mess, especially if there are a lot of graphics, tables, and bulleted/indented text. PDFs don't contain much in the way of text/style/paragraph metadata that translates into other formats so you'll end up having to reformat the document in Word anyway.

It's great converting to PDF. Trying to convert back is a nightmare. Your best bet is to snag the text in plain text format from the PDF and copy/import it into a Word doc and then format it manually. It's actually easier than dealing with the convoluted mess a converter will leave you with.
Click to expand...


Thanks for sharing this because I have been searching for something, anything that will concert PDFs to Word documents, etc. It seems there is a lot of promise but little successful offerings.

YastesLikeChicken, one question. Have you had experience with Abbyy's Transformation 2.0? Abbyy has excellent products and I was wondering if their converter really does what they claim. Thanks.
Click to expand...
That's one I haven't heard of and haven't tried out yet. I'm downloading it now and I'll test it on a simple PDF that was created in Word 07 in the first place. If it can handle that I'll try it on a more difficult PDF and let you know what I think of it.

If this works decently it would be the first one I've run across that does.
Click to expand...
After trying it out it doesn't do a terible job. However, like the rest, it doesn't properly retain formatting, styles, headers, footers, page number flow, borders, paragraph spacing, fonts, and doesn't do very well importing graphics into the DOC file. It seems to neglect tables too. It's one of the better apps I've used for conversion from PDF to Word but it's still lacking. That's not the app's fault either. In order to make the documents portable in PDF it strips all virtually all formatting information from a document during the conversion. I primarily use Framemaker which is an Adobe app and even conversion back to Frame from PDF is a nightmare. However, admittedly, I'm completely anal about proper document formatting.

Thanks for the link though. If I have to convert a PDF to Word again that's app I'd use to get started reformatting it as a Word doc. It does conversion better than anything else I've run across.
 
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