Converting PDF Documents to Microsoft Word

[Realist]

Converting PDF Documents to Microsoft Word


With the PDF document open in Acrobat 7 Standard or Professional, choose File > Save As. In the Save As dialog box, choose Microsoft Word Document from the Format (Mac) or Type (Windows) pop-up menu. Then simply click the Save button, and open the document in Word for editing.

To check or change the settings that Acrobat uses to convert PDF content to Word format, open Preferences (choose Acrobat > Preferences on the Mac or Edit > Preferences in Windows) and choose Convert From PDF from the list of Categories on the left side of the dialog box. Then choose Microsoft Word Document from the Converting From PDF scrollable list. The window at right shows you how Acrobat will handle the conversion, including whether it will include comments, preserve columns and downsample images. To change these settings, click the Edit Settings button. (Alternatively, you can change these settings when you convert any given document by clicking the Settings button in the Save As dialog box.)

The conversion may not be perfect, depending on factors such as the complexity of the layout, and whether you have the document's fonts on your system. For simple business documents, Acrobat's Save As command does a decent job of converting to Word.


Copying and Pasting PDF Content into a New File:

You can copy content out of a PDF file without having to convert the entire file to Word (or other) format. You can select text (including columns and tables), graphics and images for copying using the Select tool, whose pointer changes depending on the type of content that's underneath it. With the PDF document open in Acrobat 7 Standard or Professional, use the Select tool to do any of the following:

• Drag to select a word, a line or even a few paragraphs of text. Drag the blue triangle handlebars to adjust the selection.

• To select a column of text, press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) and drag a marquee over the column of text.

• To select all of the text on the page, choose Single Page layout view and then choose Edit > Select All.

• To select a table, drag a marquee around it or, if the pointer displays a table icon, simply click to select the entire table.

• To select a graphic or image, click it or drag a marquee around it.

When your content is selected, press Command/Ctrl-C to copy it, switch to an open document in the application that you need to use, such as Word or Excel, and press Command/Ctrl-V to paste it there. Or, for more control, hold the pointer over the selected content until a menu appears, and choose the type of operation you'd like to perform, such as Copy With Formatting, or Copy As Table.

If you are unable to copy or paste, the person who created the PDF document may have applied restrictions to the file as a security measure. Check to see if that's the case by choosing File > Document Properties. Look for the item Content Copying and Extraction. If it says Not Allowed, then you're out of luck


Using Third-Party Conversion Tools:

There are many third-party tools that convert PDF documents into other formats, including Word and Excel. If you're unsatisfied with the quality of the results you achieve with Acrobat's Save As command, you can give them a try. The more graphically rich the document, the more complex the layout, the more these tools might be useful. They purport to be better at preserving layouts, including elements such as bulleted lists, headers and footers, and kanji text flow. Third-party tools include ScanSoft's PDF Converter Professional3 (Windows), BCL Technologies' Drake 7.1 (Windows) and RecoSoft's PDF2Office 2.1 Professional Edition (Mac OS X). For information on these and other PDF conversion tools, go to
http://buyersguide.pdfzone.com/

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