Convert That PDF To Word. Get That Text Back!
Anyone who has been involved in the computer game for more than a little while knows what a PDF is. PDF is a file format that stands for Portable Document Format. A PDF is meant to be non-editable and the body of the document is an image and not editable, or selectable text.
So if you received a document of say names and email addresses in a file called Leads.PDF. You can open the document, print the document and even send the document on to others. But if you want to import that information into your email address book, an excel spreadsheet or otherwise manipulate the data - you just can’t.
Now as The Admin - can’t is not in my vocabulary. No I do speak English and know what it means….but I started to look for an answer. Most of them came back to buying Adobe Acrobat Pro - Mucho Dinero. Not an option for the little guy. Then I came across all these little sites also promising to help me for $29.99 or $49.99.
I looked around the web and then I searched good old MakeUseOf.com and found this article by Aibek from January of this year. He ran down some popular free PDF tools. And low and behold he listed exactly what I needed. It’s called…..wait for it….wait for it…
FREE PDF to Word Doc Converter
I downloaded it from the link above, installed it and was greeted with this screen:
The fields and options are not only straight forward but simple as well. Just input the file you want to convert by hitting the browse button on the left and navigating to your PDF file. It will automagically set the output file to be in the same directory with just a .doc extension.
You can set how much of the document you want converted and what program if any should open the .DOC after it is created. You can choose your font, and if you want images and shapes to carry over.
That’s it. Click the “Convert to Word Document” Button and you’re off. I sat back and waited for my 986 page document to convert and it only took a few minutes. It then popped up in Word 2003 - fully editable!
What do you guys use for converting PDF’s to text? Anyone have any better or other solutions?
How do you get numbers into Excel from a PDF? Is anyone actually using Microsoft’s version of the PDF format - called XPS?
(By) Karl L. Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry who wears many hats and changes in telephone booths. Karl mostly uses his powers for good and the occasional hysterical prank. Get your geek on & follow his geeky antics at the NEW AskTheAdmin.com today. Show your support and check us out today! Where all your technology questions are answered for free!
Mac OS X can natively retrieve text from a PDF but not its formatting…
how bout zamzar.com? it converts not only pdf n tons of other formats too
daniel I agree with you Zamzar and Media-convert both convert PDf to Word easily .
When it comes to PDF to Word coversion, I heard both good and not so good things about Zamzar. In some cases pages came out blank, without images etc.
For all those who can’t get it done on Zamzar and don’t want to install the Free PDF To Doc Converter I recommend following two tools:
ConvertPdfToWord - PDF to Word Doc Converter
PDFUndoOnline - Convert PDF Document to Microsoft Word Online
Aibek,
I was just reviewing your responses to the question specific to PDF conversion to Word. It appears from your message, and please forgive me as I know this issue is long past, that an individual can manipulate PDF files using software that is not sponsored by Adobe. Does the user of such software run the risk of violating Trademark as well as intellectual property law? Specifically, the user is altering the Adobe PDF environment to accommodate a financial interest, that is, to refrain from purchasing the Adobe conversion software that is, according to your author, “pricey.” I would be interested in your opinion on this issue.
Thanks,
(Comments wont nest below this level)Bob
I would love to hear your response as well Aibek!
Karl,
I appreciate your article and the talking points that focused on the employee’s responsibility to exercise “reasonable common sense” when surfing the Internet on the company time. All HR personnel should circulate your article; however, you can promote all the Internet policies and provide hours of in-services of what a person should not do on the Internet and there’s always a couple of staff who will breach the policy so bad you think it had to be error.
I am in health care and I have had to warn physicians and ultimately fire one for visiting porn web-sites for hours.
That said, I did not see where the article addressed the issue of Intellectual property? Namely, Adobe and how the program’s pdf.file is intentionally altered by the user by deploying a non-Adobe software solution. Thus, you have to issues: The unauthorized change that is made to the Adobe file; and the user’s intent to defraud Adobe of product revenue dollars which would have been realized if the user would have purchased Adobe’s conversion software. The argument has it’s test in the following: Would Adobe authorize the use of such third party conversion software? To me, this is comparable to your dislike of “stealing” music, as well as the revenue lost in Adobe product sales.
Your thoughts.
Bob
MakeUseOf.com is very useful and I enjoy the email subscription. However, just like this article more often than not there is no information regarding OS compatibility. Unless I missed something, maybe I did, as I do most of the time I had to do a Google search to find out if it was compatible with Vista. All too often the software recommended stops it compatibility at XP. Thankfully FileHeap listed all the compatible OS systems, so I went ahead and downloaded it to give it a try.
Good work, but little bits of information like this do make a difference.
Thanks,
RDMC
You guys amaze me with many of your finds, but you must not yet be tired of me and my repeated question: “But does it work under Linux?”.
As RDMC, stated above, “more often than not there is no information regarding OS compatibility”.
I know you guys have experienced the frustration of chasing down a particular application only to find it isn’t available to your OS and I know you guys can do better than this. If nothing else, just say you do not know.
Thanks again,
Mark
Sorry 1fastbullet,
My fault - it is PC only to the best of my knowledge.
That’s really a useful tool. I was thinking about something like this to convert some of my own pdf files. Now, I got it. Thanks a lot.
Lots of good solutions for individuals, but what to do for large numbers of documents?
http://ContentWorkspace.com
This is not the place to pimp your retail product Melissa. We are all about FREE solutions over here. Please keep your SPAM to yourself.
Thanks
OS compatibility info at File Heap.
I converted a couple of PDFs of what were originally just typed paragraphs, i.e., no graphics, photos, etc. and the results were a Word doc that was 1.06 GB and another that was 798 MB - these results for documents that were 5 pages. Word would not even open them due to their size. Anyone else have this problem? I paid the $15 to avoid doing the five-step math problems, too, so the usability factor for the price (though it’s called ‘free’) is disappointing so far.
Kmelwell - I am so sorry to hear you gave away $15! This application is FREE as in Free Beer, I could not find ANY link to pay for the FREE application. Did you click on an advertising link on the page?
Can you confirm the name of the application you downloaded and File Size?
My converts were always VERY small and Totally free - I hope we can get to the bottom of this!
OCRLY? (Optical Character Recognition Really?)
Does one of you know how to extract asian characters from PDF like this one :
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/images4/PCT-PAGES/2008/472008/08140131/08140131.pdf
Nothing for free but this $100 app says it can do it:
http://www.simpleocr.com/OCR_Software/Convert_Image/convert_pdf_to_word.asp
Means there probably is a free solution out there but you need to be able to search in that language to find it…
Any readers have a solution for Krouk?
OCRLY… RLY RLY