PDF to Word

[hunt_the_fox]

Hi fellas, does anyone know of a free programme that can translate text on a PDF file to Microsoft word or similar, I've got a load of PDF docs and can't be bothered to type them all up.

Cheers-

HTF

[Heskey]

hunt_the_fox said:

Hi fellas, does anyone know of a free programme that can translate text on a PDF file to Microsoft word or similar, I've got a load of PDF docs and can't be bothered to type them all up.

Cheers-

HTF

I don't know this for certain... But isn't the point of .pdf'ing documents to stop them being edited?

I send out confirmation letters and invoices all day and have to .pdf them before sending them to stop them saying "WE AGREED TO DO THIS FOR TWO PENCE; LOOK!"

[Davi]

If you aren't bothered about the formatting you can just highlight the text with the select tool then copy and paste it into word.

[Arese]

It can be done, but it usually ends up very messy without formatting etc. Have a Google.

[Simpo Two]

How about printing the PDF off, then OCR-ing it back to a text file?

Edited by Simpo Two on Thursday 23 October 16:13

[Davi]

Heskey said:

I don't know this for certain... But isn't the point of .pdf'ing documents to stop them being edited?

No that's just a by-product. The original point of pdf was to make a stand alone format for printed material, so printers didn't have to have all the same software and variations as the designers.

[AngryS3Owner]

Best solution is to get the full version of acrobat, use the OCR and then copy the text and paste it into word.

[trooperiziz]

http://www.hellopdf.com/

[arej]

http://pdfundo.net/convert/

[SGirl]

There's a package called ABBYY PDF converter (or something) that converts PDFs to Word fairly successfully.

[simonrockman]

There is a free demo of the Avanquest software at http://www.avanquest.com/USA/small-business/pc-ess...
It puts random asterisks in but you can see how it would handle the formatting if you bought it.
I didn't bother and just cut and pasted the document I wanted.

[SpunkyMonkey]

The latest version of OpenOffice has free plugin available that will import PDFs. It's not perfect by any means but it will get the text into an editable window, and OpenOffice can then save as a word document.