PDF to Word

[Jaffacaique]

Has anyone come across a PDF to Word converter that actually does what the title says WITHOUT losing ANY of the formatting. I have have tried around 7 different programmes claiming to do this, but each time some of the pictures have been removed and I am left with a box instead.

If anyone has been succesful converting PDF to Word, which software did you use? freeware or paid for.

 

[Nothinman]

Good luck with that.

 

[yinan]

You are probably having this problem because the original document was scanned in without OCR being turned on, so that the pdf document is not a series of characters but just one picture.

 

[Navid]

If you had a FrameMaker (a word processor) file and you wanted to convert it to a Microsoft Word (another word processor) file, that would be possible if you found the right converter. But, PDF is not a word processing format.

Expecting to go back to the original source document with all the original information (formatting, hyperlinks, cross references, individual images, individual tables, headers and footers, watermarks, font references, ....) from the PDF file is expecting too much.
In general, there is a lot less information in a PDF file than there is in the originating word processor source file.

You can manually create a Word document that would print to exactly the same output that your PDF would print to. But, that could require a lot of work.


If you have a PDF file and you want to edit it, just use a tool that let's you edit PDF.
If you are the creator of the PDF, make it a habit to save in the original word processor format (Word). Only convert to PDF when you are done editing.

 

[Jaffacaique]

Thanks for the advice, the files in question are instruction manuals from various programs I have installed.

They are .chm format, what I was hoping to do is convert the file from .chm to PDF which does work very well but the way the .chm file is created means that the page numbering when converted to PDF does not run continous through all of the converted information i.e. page 1 to 100 for all of the sections of the manual from start to end.

What I can only achieve at present is Page 1 to 5 of one section of the manual, then when next section is appended it too is numbered as Page 1 to 7 instead of continuing on the page numbering from the 1st converted section. None of the programmes I have seen as yet allow conversion of the whole .chm file, only section by section.

I thought that using a PDF to word conversion afterwards would allow me renumber the whole document cheaply as I already have office installed, I have tried several programmes claiming that this is possible but information appears to go missing during the process.

Any useful advice welcomed

 

[QuixoticOne]

http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/
http://archmage.sourceforge.net/

You should look at the LINUX based tools, there are plenty of ones that can take html files (e.g. output by archmage given chm inputs) and convert them to other things like postscript, pdf, et. al.

pdftk can probably renumber pdfs for you..

 

[corkyg]

I do that fairly easily with NitroPDF ver. 5.4.1.7. It has an Export function directly to my Word 2007.

 

[Jaffacaique]

Hi Corkyg


Thanks for the info

I will try the demo download..... have you converted documents with graphics also???

 

[b0mbrman]

Originally posted by: Jaffacaique
Has anyone come across a PDF to Word converter that actually does what the title says WITHOUT losing ANY of the formatting. I have have tried around 7 different programmes claiming to do this, but each time some of the pictures have been removed and I am left with a box instead.

If anyone has been succesful converting PDF to Word, which software did you use? freeware or paid for.

Hey, it's an old topic...but...

I have never used it (I have recommended that our office buy it, but it's never happened), but according to net reviews, OmniPage Professional 16 excels in the exact purpose of retaining formatting when doing OCR:

http://www.nuance.com/omnipage/professional/