[Editors] PDF to Word?

[Ellen Williams]

Actually, there are 3 options.

1. Save As: in addition to the Save As Text feature, which Tom mentions, 
there is also a Save as RTF and Save as Word (Doc). These generally retain 
the text formatting, i.e., font and style, but not the spacing, 
indentation, or page layout. Headers and footers are inserted in the text 
as they occur, and have to be manually extracted. A mixed bag.

2. If the document is not too long, you can get a better result using the 
Select Text tool and copying and pasting text into Word one page at a time. 
I've found this gives me results that are closer to the original 
formatting, usually and I don't have to extract the headers and footers and 
fiddle with other stuff.

3. If the PDF document is a page image, as opposed to text, AND you are on 
a PC as opposed to a Mac, you can download a free Optical Character 
Recognition (OCR) plug-in from the Adobe website. This will automatically 
convert the page images to editable text, and you can then use options 1 or 
2 to export.  How well the OCR scanning works depends on the quality of the 
scanned image.

With any of these, the more heavily formatted the PDF file is, the harder 
it will be to export the file quickly or easily.

Good luck!
--Ellen

At 3/4/2005 08:04 AM  Friday, Tom Pixton wrote:
>Hi Jennie:
>
>Acrobat 6.0 allows a Save as Text feature, which creates a plain text 
>document that can then be opened in Word. However, none of the formats of 
>the original pdf are preserved. This only works if the pdf was originally 
>created from a text-based source file. For example, if text pages are 
>scanned as graphics, and saved as a pdf, Acrobat cannot extract text, as 
>what appears as text is really an image.
>
>Tom
>
>At 8:44 PM -0500 3/3/05, Jennie Leith wrote:
>>hi,
>>
>>does anyone know a quick & accurate way to convert from PDF to MS 
>>Word?  a professor would like to convert the PDF journal article 
>>proofsheet sent by an editor.
>>
>>thanks,
>>jennie
>>
>>--
>>Jennifer Leith
>>Program Coordinator
>>MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
>>Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise & Emissions Reduction (PARTNER)
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>>Tel: (617) 253-4929  ///  Fax: (617) 258-5940
>>
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>--
>Tom Pixton
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