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Subject:Exporting to Word from PDF using Acrobat 6? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 9 Oct 2003 11:47:17 -0400
Emily Berk reported problems getting Acrobat 6 files back into Word. Haven't
used 6, so I can't provide specific comments, but the best solution in
general is to request the source file from the person who generated the PDF.
In my experience, Acrobat (5.x) generally does a miserable job of
extracting/exporting text; it doesn't understand columns or newspaper-style
"continued" stories at all, it repeatedly inserts headers and footers on
each page rather than deleting them or adding them to Word's headers and
footers, and so on. Very frustrating.
You mentioned that: <<Acrobat 6 seems to be able to export nearly all the
text of this same PDF to (admittedly extremely ugly) HTML.>>
Perhaps that's your interim solution? Word does a decent job of importing
straightforward HTML, so if the HTML file is acceptable (all the content is
present and in the right order), simply open the file in Word, resave it in
Word format, then do your cleanup.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
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