Re: PDF to Word conversion?

[John Allred <jack -at- allrednet -dot- com>]

   I'd like to add what, I hope, is a useful observation. Chris, I trust
   you got the answer you needed on how to get "editable" Word files in
   converting from Acrobat. You didn't ask about the issue of preserving
   format, which is an important consideration. The better the format
   after conversion, the less time you'd have to spend massaging it back
   into shape.
   I've seen truly hideous conversions from Acrobat to Word, and I always
   figured it had something to do with the original file format. I also
   thought that using Acrobat's Article feature might have some effect. I
   did a little experimenting to test my suspicions.
   If I had other page layout programs like Frame or InDesign, I would
   have tested using them. Having only Ventura Publisher, I used that for
   testing. I suspect similar results from the Adobe products. I'm using
   Acrobat Pro 9 and Word 2007.
   I worked with a document that changes from one to two columns, has
   headers and footers and spans three pages.
     * A trip from Ventura => Acrobat => MS Word yields a document that
       preserves the columns and the word order. The headers and footers
       are lost, but their content appears in the right locations within
       the final document.
     * A trip from MS Word => Acrobat => MS Word yields a document whose
       format and word order are demolished. The final file's first two
       pages revert to a single column. The final page goes to two-column.
       The document was originated in Word, using its column features to
       accomplish the same format as with Ventura Publisher.

   My takeaway is that the underlying structure of a document, as
   translated into postscript for Acrobat, is going to have a huge effect
   on how usable that PDF file is when someone wants to convert it into
   another format. Succinctly, from an Acrobat perspective, structure in =
   structure out. I didn't find any advantage in using Acrobat's Article
   feature.
   Regards,
   John Allred
   On 10/5/2011 7:49 AM, Dan Goldstein wrote:

Many PDF-to-Word conversions (not all of them) leave the formatted text
in text boxes. For Jack Lyon's excellent macro for converting text boxes
to text, see:
[1]<http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?sort=&mid=172
0121653>


-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Morton
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 6:08 PM
To: [2]techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: PDF to Word conversion?

I have Acrobat Pro 9. What's the best way to create an editable Word
file from a PDF? Please be explicit, as simply choosing *File* >
*Export* is generating an image of each page that is not editable.




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