Help needed with converting pdf to word. Idiot proof please.

demented_2 · 24 February 2007 at 6:59PM

Hi, My daughter is trying to convert a pdf file to word, and does not have a clue how to do it, neither do i, sad arn't we. Can any of you clever people assist please. Thanks, we are not computer literate at all.

superjaggybunnet · 24 February 2007 at 7:06PM

You will need to buy the adobe software to do this I think.

They make it a pdf so that you can't change it.

Shazmar_2 · 24 February 2007 at 7:19PM

Hi Demented, something here may help.

Option 1: Download Adobe Acrobat or other PDF conversion software, open your PDF document and choose save as Text.

Option 2: Use GMail PDF conversion engine to convert doc, xls, ppt, rtf, pdf and OpenOffice documents to HTML. No software download is required.

Option 3: This is straight from Adobe, the developers of PDF. Adobe has developed these conversion tools as a free service to allow blind and visually impaired users to read Adobe PDF files.

You need to send the Adobe PDF as a MIME attachment in an e-mail message to Adobe:

* For conversion to plain text, e- mail the PDF file to pdf2txt@adobe.com
* For conversion to HTML, e-mail the file to pdf2html@adobe.com

All converted Adobe PDF documents will be sent back to the sender as MIME attachments.

This Adobe PDF conversion service provided work best on documents in English. Documents in European languages, such as French or German, should convert fairly well with the exception of symbols that can’t be represented by ASCII text, such as umlauts. Languages requiring double-byte characters, such as Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and Hebrew are not supported. (Adobe may occasionally access the content you submit for purposes of quality control and administration of the conversion service.)

Option 4: Use the free Adobe Reader to save the PDF file as text, or use the full version of Adobe Acrobat Professional or Acrobat Standard to save the file to text or other formats, including Rich Text Format (RTF), HTML, XML.

f1charlie · 24 February 2007 at 11:02PM

This claims to convert to text, how much of the formatting it retains, I don't know, but it is free so it's worth a try!

http://www.dirfile.com/publisher/pdf-to-html-word-com.html

Icon_3 · 25 February 2007 at 7:46AM

I have got rid of Adobe and now use this only and it's free...

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

It can copy and paste text from pdf documents with ease!

alared · 25 February 2007 at 8:42AM

Might be reading this wrong but you don`t need any special software to copy and paste from an Adobe pdf file document.

Open the pdf file and at the very top of the page where the "hand" icon is,next to it click on "select" ,this changes the hand pointer into an arrowhead and you can now copy,then right click and "save to clipboard" the highlighted area.
This can now be pasted onto Word.

superjaggybunnet · 25 February 2007 at 12:46PM

Hi alared,

Good tip so I tried it and it just pasted in loads of gobbledygook. It didn't actually copy over the text that I had highlighted. Any idea why that should be?

johnmc · 25 February 2007 at 2:33PM

A number of ways of achieving thi;
In the Adobe reader choose File / "Save as Text".

Also Edit / "Copy file to clipboard".

The camera on the toolbar will allow you to select pictures by dragging a border around them and will save them to the clipboard automatically.

cwoodham · 25 February 2007 at 2:34PM

I would try doing it bit by bit, rather than the whole file straight off. Try copying one sentence, then a paragraph and so on saving your Word file each time. At some point you might hit something which is causing the problem. Try and find out where the problem is occurring. Skip that (hopefully) short piece and keep pasting the rest. Go to the Word file and key in the short section with the problem.

espresso · 25 February 2007 at 2:48PM

superjaggybunnet wrote:

Hi alared,

Good tip so I tried it and it just pasted in loads of gobbledygook. It didn't actually copy over the text that I had highlighted. Any idea why that should be?

Open the pdf file in Adobe Reader, do Ctrl+d and then click on the Security tab to display the Document restrictions summary. Copying/extraction may not be allowed.

Help needed with converting pdf to word. Idiot proof please.

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