I need to be able to convert PDF files into Word documents that I can
edit/format, what are my options?

I was told by one person to use the MS Document Imager but the problem with
that is the formatting and the accuracy - many letters are changed, entire
paragraph missing, etc....

This is going to become a regular project and it almost seems like it would
be easier to retype the whole thing.

Any suggestions???? THANK YOU

There are several programs that will convert from a .pdf to .doc. None are
perfect - some are better than others. I have ScanSoft's PDF converter.
Sometimes it's really great, other times............well, not so good.

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]



"Lilybitt1" wrote in message
...
I need to be able to convert PDF files into Word documents that I can
edit/format, what are my options?

I was told by one person to use the MS Document Imager but the problem
with
that is the formatting and the accuracy - many letters are changed, entire
paragraph missing, etc....

This is going to become a regular project and it almost seems like it
would
be easier to retype the whole thing.

Any suggestions???? THANK YOU

On Thu, 1 Dec 2005 15:12:02 -0800, Lilybitt1
wrote:

I need to be able to convert PDF files into Word documents that I can
edit/format, what are my options?

I was told by one person to use the MS Document Imager but the problem with
that is the formatting and the accuracy - many letters are changed, entire
paragraph missing, etc....

This is going to become a regular project and it almost seems like it would
be easier to retype the whole thing.

Any suggestions???? THANK YOU

It sounds like you have a lot of this work to do, so it may be worth
the money to spring for a commercial solution such as PDF Converter
from Nuance (formerly ScanSoft),
http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/standard/.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

To add to what Jay has said, PDF files are graphics images and how easy they
are to convert rather depends on what they began as and whether they are
protected by Acrobat security. I have not tried the application suggested by
Jay, but Finereader works well and makes a fair stab at retaining the
formatting. There are also plenty of dedicated tools around eg PDF2Word -
http://www.verypdf.com/pdf2word/index.html that work quite well also.

No tool is going to be 100% accurate and formatting is always going to be a
problem. PDF is not intended to be edited. That's the whole idea of the
format.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Jay Freedman wrote:
On Thu, 1 Dec 2005 15:12:02 -0800, Lilybitt1
wrote:

I need to be able to convert PDF files into Word documents that I can
edit/format, what are my options?

I was told by one person to use the MS Document Imager but the
problem with that is the formatting and the accuracy - many letters
are changed, entire paragraph missing, etc....

This is going to become a regular project and it almost seems like
it would be easier to retype the whole thing.

Any suggestions???? THANK YOU

It sounds like you have a lot of this work to do, so it may be worth
the money to spring for a commercial solution such as PDF Converter
from Nuance (formerly ScanSoft),
http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/standard/.

Hi,
Thanks all for the info and suggestions. What are you thoughts on using the
Microsoft document imager to convert to text and is this an option - I was
very unhappy with the results on two documents that I tried. But is this 'as
good as it gets'?

Thanks

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

To add to what Jay has said, PDF files are graphics images and how easy they
are to convert rather depends on what they began as and whether they are
protected by Acrobat security. I have not tried the application suggested by
Jay, but Finereader works well and makes a fair stab at retaining the
formatting. There are also plenty of dedicated tools around eg PDF2Word -
http://www.verypdf.com/pdf2word/index.html that work quite well also.

No tool is going to be 100% accurate and formatting is always going to be a
problem. PDF is not intended to be edited. That's the whole idea of the
format.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Jay Freedman wrote:
On Thu, 1 Dec 2005 15:12:02 -0800, Lilybitt1
wrote:

I need to be able to convert PDF files into Word documents that I can
edit/format, what are my options?

I was told by one person to use the MS Document Imager but the
problem with that is the formatting and the accuracy - many letters
are changed, entire paragraph missing, etc....

This is going to become a regular project and it almost seems like
it would be easier to retype the whole thing.

Any suggestions???? THANK YOU

It sounds like you have a lot of this work to do, so it may be worth
the money to spring for a commercial solution such as PDF Converter
from Nuance (formerly ScanSoft),
http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/standard/.

Microsoft's document imager is not too bad on text retrieval but hopeless on
formatting.
Finereader is significantly better and makes a good stab at formatting. All
OCR has limitations.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Lilybitt1 wrote:
Hi,
Thanks all for the info and suggestions. What are you thoughts on
using the Microsoft document imager to convert to text and is this an
option - I was very unhappy with the results on two documents that I
tried. But is this 'as good as it gets'?

Thanks

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

To add to what Jay has said, PDF files are graphics images and how
easy they are to convert rather depends on what they began as and
whether they are protected by Acrobat security. I have not tried the
application suggested by Jay, but Finereader works well and makes a
fair stab at retaining the formatting. There are also plenty of
dedicated tools around eg PDF2Word -
http://www.verypdf.com/pdf2word/index.html that work quite well
also.

No tool is going to be 100% accurate and formatting is always going
to be a problem. PDF is not intended to be edited. That's the whole
idea of the format.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Jay Freedman wrote:
On Thu, 1 Dec 2005 15:12:02 -0800, Lilybitt1
wrote:

I need to be able to convert PDF files into Word documents that I
can edit/format, what are my options?

I was told by one person to use the MS Document Imager but the
problem with that is the formatting and the accuracy - many letters
are changed, entire paragraph missing, etc....

This is going to become a regular project and it almost seems like
it would be easier to retype the whole thing.

Any suggestions???? THANK YOU

It sounds like you have a lot of this work to do, so it may be worth
the money to spring for a commercial solution such as PDF Converter
from Nuance (formerly ScanSoft),
http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/standard/.