PDF to Word 3

[jlockley]

For a number of reasons, among them that some blob files will not store pdf's, I need to get incoming pdf's converted to word or rtf. Cut and paste is usually iffy, generally time consuming and occasionally impossible (I just found myself staring at a resume converted into about 100 double spaced single word lines). There are a number of options on the web, but I thought I'd asked if anyone had exceptionally positive experience. I am playing with Nitro web based, but disk based will work better.
I have Corel Office loaded, but that never comes out really well. (Corel Office and open and save PDF's).

 

[jlockley]

Just as a quick demonstration, the first line of a submitted PDF opened in Word Perfect reads: "adership le s xecutive hef world class estaurant based in e ayrea." I notice that PDF Creator has picked up the key word and is advertising here, so I will have a look at it, too.

 

[jlockley]

reporting back on PDF Creator: 1) Does not work. 2) Changes search engine default to BING, hides all others. Bah!

 

[Jewel142]

Try opening the file in PDF and they copying the text directly from the pdf file (you should have a flashing cursor and should be able to highlight and copy your text). Then just paste it into your word document.

This also works if you need to put it into excel and then use your text to columns feature.

Good luck!

Jewel

 

[macropod]

I suspect this is related to the issue discussed here:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1646583&page=1

What might work is to open the pdf in an app like Adobe Acrobat Pro and print the file to PDF from there (saving the new PDF with another name). In effect, you'd be using one PDF app to make sense of the output from another.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]

 

[jlockley]

Acrobat pro is the only word processing program I don't have. It makes little sense, as I can't store the info. Thanks.

 

[macropod]

Acrobat pro is the only word processing program I don't have.

Acrobat pro is not a word processing program. It's a professional PDF-production app. A free alternative that might work for this situation is Ghostscript, which can round-trip a PDF to postscript and back again.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]

 

[jlockley]

Correct, but is used as one by many. Unfortunately. Thanks for the tip on Ghostscript. I will have a look. All in all, though, I have other programs for my publishing needs, so having that would just be to be able to receive incoming documents and alter them for storage.
I didn't realize how many pdf makers there are on the market, but they explain why I am receiving so many more documents in the format.

Thanks.

 

[EDCSYS]

I don't know if this will help you or not.

But, based on what your title said, have you tried to use "Able2Extract" and "doPDF 6"?

"Able2Extract" is an utility I used to convert pdf to word, excel, or powerpoint, it works in a way that it can convert most of the words and letters but will miss some of the symbols.

"doPDF 6" is the other utility I used to convert documents to pdf by using the print function.

Both of them are free, so they works for me.

Just my 2 cents


let me know if there are better and free utilities to do this.

 

[strongm]

>used as one by many

I don't think I've met anybody actually using Acrobat as a word processor in the entire 18 years of it's existence. I'm not even sure how you'd do it. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because you have received an Acrobat PDF document that it was originated in Acrobat

>I didn't realize how many pdf makers there are

PDF is probably the most popular and successful platform agnostic electronic document format in the world.

 

[Gruuuu]

PDF is probably the most popular and successful platform agnostic electronic document format in the world.

.TXT!

 

[strongm]

Ignoring the argument about whether a .txt file can really be considered a document within the contexct we are discussing here, I have to point out that .txt has problems with line endings, and how characters outside of the ASCII range are interpreted - so arenot platform agnostic.

 

[jlockley]

Obviously.And with an abundance of free PDF creators and alternatives to Acrobat, possibly now delivered with the Mac OS (? just a guess) getting more so daily. Drat!

I am actually fairly sure that most of the documents I receive are created PDF, but it's really of no consequence. They just won't work.
Unfortunately we deal with Paradox, which we have built to our specifications over many years (it's a very effective program for our purposes, but which Corel has more or less orphaned and will not change at any time in the near future. Among Paradox's issues is record document storage. It will not store PDF's. (It cannot, unfortunately, be exported to other programs with the stored documents due to a propriety storage method...which means we are stuck with Paradox.
Working with custom databases of something near 20,000, 3/4 of which have blob entries, we could not afford to have the information transferred, so the only available work around right now is to insist on files from text processing programs.
I can see the logic behind sending it - few errors, nice format, etc, but for the purpose of resume presentation it's not idea. From our perspective it's a pain in the neck.

 

[strongm]

>It will not store PDF's

I know you have other reasons why you'd prefer not to use PDFs, but I'm not convinced this is one of them. It's been a while since I went anywhere near Paradox, but I'm pretty certain it is possible to store (and retrieve) almost any binary object you like in a Paradox BLOB (assumping Delphi) via a TStream

 

[macropod]

Hi jlockley,

Acrobat pro is the only word processing program I don't have.

Acrobat pro is not a word processing program.

Correct, but is used as one by many.

Like strongm, I've never heard of anyone doing such a thing. For one simple reason: its word-processing support is best described as rudimentary! It doesn't even have the Replace part of Find & Replace.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]

 

[velveteen]

why not try pdf converter software like nemopdf?

It can help you convert pdf to word format easily and vice versa.

 

[MakeItSo]

PDF is probably the most popular and successful platform agnostic electronic document format in the world.

Yes indeed - because PDF is an end format.

If you need this on a regular basis, I recommend buying a commercial PDF extraction/conversion tool.
Tool's I've worked with and can recommend are:
1) ABBYY FineReader
2) SolidConverter
3) ABBYY PDFTransformer

Acrobat's own conversion is very often... umm... unworthy...

Good luck!

[navy]"We had to turn off that service to comply with the CDA Bill."[/navy]
- The Bastard Operator From Hell

 

[jlockley]

Strongman - not many people have used Paradox for years. Our practice is cut and paste into the field, which works with everything but jpg. There may be a workaround with Tstream (I will look into that), but we also process (I also process) quite a few documents, and having to seek the document from the form is not ideal. Delphi abandoned Paradox many years ago, and Corel has pretty much orphaned it, so...
Thank you for the recommendations, MakeItSo

 

[kjv1611]

Regarding EDCSYS's mentions:

Able2Extract is not free. It is a free TRIAL for 7 days, then you have to pay. See their site:

http://www.investintech.com/prod_downloadsa2e.htm

doPDF 6 is one of MANY "pdf printers" that are free. And frankly, from the reviews, it doesn't look like it's anywhere near the top.

I realize it's not a direct fix to the posted question of this thread, just to mention it in relevance to the post by EDCSYS, one that I use very regularly at home, and I've put it on many computers with absolutely no issues (diff versions of Windows) is CutePDF.

 

[jlockley]

Thanks. This is exactly what I need to know. I tried a couple, and it came out a mess (I suspect that some of the PDF writers aren't that good to begin with), but no reason not to try more. I have, however, reset my submission process to eliminate pdf's, which helps a great deal. People then write and ask why they could not submit, and I ask for a Word/RFT etc document, which seems to work.