pdf to word doc

[ms_m]

I am using OS X mac, and when I have a pdf file and "save as" a word
doc, I find that the word doc is really a form of picture file, and I
cannot edit it in word. Does anyone know how I can edit a word doc
made from a pdf file? Thanks

 

[Elliott Roper]

I am using OS X mac, and when I have a pdf file and "save as" a word
doc, I find that the word doc is really a form of picture file, and I
cannot edit it in word. Does anyone know how I can edit a word doc
made from a pdf file? Thanks

With great difficulty.

I did one this afternoon. It was password protected. In the end I
screen-grabbed columns, passed them through GraphicConverter, OCR'd
with ReadIris, and re-assembled the text in Word. Then I went back and
screen grabbed the diagrams and left it to somebody else to proofread.

It was one helluva a lot faster than typing it all again, but then, if
you knew what a crap typist I am, you would know that is faint praise
indeed.

Even without password protection it is a Royal Pain. Text often forgets
the order it was meant to be read - like it will merge columns already.
Line endings come back set in concrete. There might be subtle little
space thingies between characters.. The list goes on.

Depending on how the document was produced, you may do better with a
full (and expensive and slow and ugly and unresponsive) copy of
Acrobat.

As a rule, you are better off pleading with the author to send you the
source of the pdf. If I want my readers to see how a Word document
looks like to me, before their grotty little PC wees all over it, I
send 'em a pdf as well as the Word. But they get the Word for something
to edit. The pdf is hopeless.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi guys,

TextLightning says it can do this:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13405

So does Trapeze
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23095

-Jim
--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
**Everyone is encouraged to post answers to any unanswered questions
whenever you see one that you know the answer to.

-Jim

 

[ms_m]

Thanks for the input. Elliot's description sounds difficult --
stresses me out just to read it, so I doubt that the boss can handle
it. I checked the links for Textlightning and Trapeze. from Jim.
Trapeze gets an awful overall rating of 1 star; Textlightning gets a
way better 4 stars rating. If the downloads are tryouts, I'll check it
out. Since the pdfs in question were made from e-mail messages,
keeping those format is not desirable since the text is not in good
order, hence the "save as" word decision.
I appreciate all the info folks. I'll try to get back as to what I
discover
M

 

[ms_m]

Hi guys,

TextLightning says it can do this:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13405

So does Trapeze
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23095

-Jim
--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
**Everyone is encouraged to post answers to any unanswered questions
whenever you see one that you know the answer to.

-Jim

Thanks for all the comments. Elliot's description sounds difficult --
stressed me out just to read it, so the boss would get totally lost
trying that! I checked the product links from Jim , and one has 1
star, and one has 4 stars so that's a big clue. If the downloads are
tryouts, I'll check them out. The original text was a long e-mail
w/badly formatted text. Made into pdf, hence the "save as" word/rtf.
I need to edit that, and was surprised I couldn't in word, so asked my
question. Maybe Textlightning will save me. Thanks
M

 

[Elliott Roper]

Thanks for the input. Elliot's description sounds difficult --
stresses me out just to read it, so I doubt that the boss can handle
it. I checked the links for Textlightning and Trapeze. from Jim.
Trapeze gets an awful overall rating of 1 star; Textlightning gets a
way better 4 stars rating. If the downloads are tryouts, I'll check it
out. Since the pdfs in question were made from e-mail messages,
keeping those format is not desirable since the text is not in good
order, hence the "save as" word decision.
I appreciate all the info folks. I'll try to get back as to what I
discover
M

I tried Textlightning on the document I OCR'd yesterday. Useless. OCR
produced far better results. On a simpler document (single column and
no diagrams) it was more of a toss up. It put footers at the top of
page and took a whole page to recover from encountering a table. Some
pages were so long and thin there was only one character per line.
There were many instances of it chopping a word up, probably because
the program that generated it was indulging in a little letterspacing.

I did not bother trying to fix it. It was clear that I'd be spending
far more time cleaning up the text in Word, than I would have spent in
the OCR program.

I'd be the first to admit that it is not easy to turn PDF into nicely
formatted Word docs. There is no reason why a PDF cannot spray all the
e's all over a page before moving onto all the t's and all the way down
to the q's. There is no reason why half the letters on a page could not
be outlines. Indeed a simple way to extract text from a PDF might be to
have a program that renders each page as a bitmap and then OCRs it!

In fact the OCR nonsense went quite smoothly. If I were doing lots of
it, I'd invest a bit of effort in Applescript or perl to glue the
process into a single application.

 

[ms_m]

OK, thanks for the info. Maybe I shouldn't even try the textlightening
tryout. I do have the full Acrobat standard program, and appleworks
(applescript in that??). But the pdf into word doc was a one-time
thing so far. Boss wants to do that from time to time, but I think
best not to count on it. Time is important in business and too mcuh
time on one thing seems ridiculous. I'll check Acrobat standard
futher for any leads. I do believe Acrobat professional edition can do
th edit job on pdfs, but not sure
M

 

[Elliott Roper]

OK, thanks for the info. Maybe I shouldn't even try the textlightening
tryout. I do have the full Acrobat standard program, and appleworks
(applescript in that??). But the pdf into word doc was a one-time
thing so far. Boss wants to do that from time to time, but I think
best not to count on it. Time is important in business and too mcuh
time on one thing seems ridiculous. I'll check Acrobat standard
futher for any leads. I do believe Acrobat professional edition can do
th edit job on pdfs, but not sure
M

Acrobat is definitely worth a try.

Good luck with it.