PDF --> Microsoft Word

[redwing00]

Im not very talented with computers, but i was wondering how to copy something from a PDF and paste to Microsoft Word AND changing the text to a normal text one would be able to achieve by typing:

1. I've tried both text select and column select, column select works best becuase slecting all text in both columns jumbles the words together.

2. Pasting into Word gives a columnlike text. I messed with the font size and style and tried messing with the one button that changes text to things such as Normal, Default Paragraph Font, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 but that doesn't seem to work. I've also tried AutoFormat. It seems to show the problem (enters after every line). How can I remove these without going through every line and deleting?

Another problem: I'm not sure why but several errors occur in Word that aren't in the PDF. For example,

the end of the sentance will have the period out here . but in the PDF it is right at the end of the sentance. And "A few" turns into "Afew"

Thanks for helping me!!

 

[Henry]

Im not very talented with computers, but i was wondering how to copy something from a PDF and paste to Microsoft Word AND changing the text to a normal text one would be able to achieve by typing:

someone may know of some helpful tools, but they only way I've ever done it is through old-fashioned manual labor -- with a couple of tricks.

End-breaks after every line? Select the affected text a paragraph at the time (a pain I know, but doable for small passages, which is what I use this for), then use the find and replace feature, to replace every hard return with nothing. This can be done in Word by inserting a paragraph mark (^p) from the format drop-down menu. replace it with nothing, or a space, depending on the text. Getting this into a rhythm, or assigning it to a macro, will improve your speed on this dramatically.

 

[AutoSponge]

Get the full version of acrobat and save as a .doc.

 

[Sakzilla]

Agreed - use the full version of Adobe Acrobat, and you can save it as a usable document. And some of the text thingys go away if you save it as an RTF, open Word, then save it as a .DOC

Also, linux word processors allow you to move back and forth pretty easily.

 

[Golem2176]

Redwing, send me an email, I might have some software that can help you.

 

[redwing00]

thanks Golem, I'd appreciate the software, but I don't seem to have your e-mail (I clicked your profile and it says that you turned that option off).

If you just want to go ahead and send me a e-mail mine is:

redwing_the_wizard (at) hotmail (dot) com

Thanks!

(and thanks to everyone's help as well)

 

[redhawk]

If you're not wedded to Microsoft, or have Cygwin installed...

Im not very talented with computers, but i was wondering how to copy something from a PDF and paste to Microsoft Word AND changing the text to a normal text one would be able to achieve by typing:

1. I've tried both text select and column select, column select works best becuase slecting all text in both columns jumbles the words together.

2. Pasting into Word gives a columnlike text. I messed with the font size and style and tried messing with the one button that changes text to things such as Normal, Default Paragraph Font, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 but that doesn't seem to work. I've also tried AutoFormat. It seems to show the problem (enters after every line). How can I remove these without going through every line and deleting?

Another problem: I'm not sure why but several errors occur in Word that aren't in the PDF. For example,

the end of the sentance will have the period out here . but in the PDF it is right at the end of the sentance. And "A few" turns into "Afew"

Thanks for helping me!!

ISTR a program called pdf2txt which just might do what you need.

Assuming you can do Perl, you can give these folks a check-out: http://www.sanface.com/

Redhawk

PS - Most of your problems are probably coming to be because the folks who created the PDF don't _WANT_ you to schlep the data into Word for you to manipulate from there.

 

[annadobritt]

There's a program available from Scansoft called PDFConverter. I use it when I'm too lazy to open up Acrobat Pro 6.0.

Here's the link:
http://www.scansoft.com/pdfconverter/