Pdf To Word Convertor

[AlexLah]

Hi all,

Anyone knows a freeware program to convert a PDF file to Word.

Just need to convert one document (about 50 Pages).

Ore anyone that has PDF writer that wants to help me out, it is just a one timer.

Thanks!

Kind regards,

Alex

[guardian]

Sent you a PM.

[StrongView]

Another option is Google Docs. You can save all files to PDF.

[Martin_F]

You can also try cutepdf with ghostscript:

Ghostscript For PDF Writer: http://www.ghostscript.com/awki

CutePDF Writer: http://www.acrosoftware.com

These are free versions.

[paveet]

You can also try cutepdf with ghostscript:

Ghostscript For PDF Writer: http://www.ghostscript.com/awki

CutePDF Writer: http://www.acrosoftware.com

These are free versions.

CutePDF+GhostScript is excellent. It does seriously rip off the adobe's interface tho

[briley]

Don't all the programs talked about do word to PDF?

The OP asked for PDF to word - something I don't think exists especially as even Adobe's offering to edit a PDF file can't do it efficiently.

[autonomous_unit]

It's not generally feasible because PDF (and Postscript) are closer to "rendering" languages than actual structured document languages. It would help if the original poster explained his problem and goal in more detail. What sort of PDF? What is the reason for wanting Word documents (to view, to edit, ...)? I remember somebody had a problem on this board a few years ago where they were trying to, ahem, borrow a PDF price sheet that had tables of information. That is much harder than importing some basic paragraphs of text.

One approach would be to use Ghostscript to render the PDF pages into images, with one image per page in the Word file.

There are some open source tools on Linux/Unix platforms such as pdftohtml and pdftotext which do a decent job of converting the PDF to more basic formats. You will likely lose some formatting in the process, but the output might just be editable by humans. Of course, if the PDF has lots of image content in it, that will at best result in similar images in the output and not in editable text, even if the images have words in them.

A brute force method might produce a Word document with hundreds of floating boxes, each with a few words or letters in them at a specific position on the page. I think nobody has bothered writing this kind of tool because it probably is not what people would want anyway.

Another brute force method is to convert PDF to PS, then use pstoedit to generate a low-level vector graphics file representation. This could then be edited in detail, e.g. with page setting/desktop publishing tools. You can even get it to render the letters as vectorized objects rather than as "text" in the vector formatted output. This of course is NOT akin to word-processing. You could edit the shape and placement of letters, but not modify sentences in any meaningful way...

[JayBKK]

Not freeware, but Scansoft PDF converter does the trick for me. However with a combination of text, tables and/or images the formatting/layout can be a bit messed up.

[Maestro]

I’ve got Adobe Acrobat Professional version 7.0 (expensive) on my PC. This lets me save a PDF file in the Microsoft Word format. Sometimes, I believe when the PDF file contains tables and graphics, the result is a little messy and needs some work to clean it up.

--

Maestro

[johnh101]

I’ve got Adobe Acrobat Professional version 7.0 (expensive) on my PC. This lets me save a PDF file in the Microsoft Word format. Sometimes, I believe when the PDF file contains tables and graphics, the result is a little messy and needs some work to clean it up.

--

Maestro

I did this yesterday. Just save as "filename.doc" (*.doc is in file types)

It is not perfect but if it is purely a text document 5 - 10 minutes tidying it up it looks brand new.

Edited March 14, 2007 by johnh101

[a1falang]

Yes, I need the same thing, a program that converts a PDF (with embedded Thai and English fonts) into .rtf or .doc or even .txt (no complex layout, just simple block paragraphs). I can open and view in Adobe Acrobat 5 no problem, and save as .rtf., but the Thai appears as scrambled characters.

[briley]

Using acrobate reader v8 I have just tried :

select text

copy text

paste into a notepad document.

It worked for Thai and English but I lost the formatting, retained paragraphs but lost centre on page etc.

On one document I also got the option 'paste with formating' that retained the bullet markings. But the other two documents did not give me that option.

Is this method too easy?

PS Obviously you must have Thai script enabled on your computer.

Edited April 16, 2007 by briley

[a1falang]

Using acrobate reader v8 I have just tried :

select text

copy text

paste into a notepad document.

It worked for Thai and English but I lost the formatting, retained paragraphs but lost centre on page etc.

On one document I also got the option 'paste with formating' that retained the bullet markings. But the other two documents did not give me that option.

Is this method too easy?

PS Obviously you must have Thai script enabled on your computer.

Thanks, I might try that, although I usually avoid the latest versions of software, as they're usually bloated with lots of useless extra features (I still use Acrobat 5, ACDSee 5 and Photoshop 5.5, useful for 99% of things I need to do). Interesting about the "Paste with Formatting" option. My document is 108 pages with lots of bullet lists, so losing all that would be a BIG problem. The thing is, last year, I found a way of converting a Thai PDF to a Thai .doc through using some software or plug-in, and I can't remember what it was!