How to convert pdf file to word file?

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Ray Dart Profile
Ray Dart answered

There is no way to easily convert PDF to Word (I've made a living out of trying to do this for the past 4 years).

What you can do is extract the text, extract the images, and then re-assemble the whole lot together, either manually or using some of the many tools around. If you are running a Linux system, take a look at these

pdf2djvu      pdfcrop        pdfmanipulate  pdftex        pdftosrc

pdf2dsc        pdfedit        pdfmod        pdftk          pdftotext

pdf2ps        pdfetex        pdfopen        pdftocairo    pdfunite

pdfatfi        pdffonts      pdfopt        pdftohtml     

pdfbklt        pdfimages      pdfrevert      pdftoipe     

pdfchain      pdfinfo        pdfseparate    pdftoppm     

pdfclose      pdflatex      pdfstamp      pdftops

All "free" (open source).

Also take a look at www.wizards.de - Frank Siegert's PDF processing tools (RIPs and extraction tools).


2 People thanked the writer.
Walt O'Reagun
Walt O'Reagun commented
Have you looked at OpenOffice?
There's a couple extensions there that SOUND like they allow opening a PDF and saving it as Word. But I haven't actually tried them.
Ray Dart
Ray Dart commented
Yep, they don't work. (Although OO is the way to go to START extracting text from a PDF if you are non-technical).

At the end of the day PDF is actually a set of instructions that describe a page in almost programmatic terms. Much of the text data may be stored in raster/image form. You need a RIP** (or Adobe's/Frank Siegert's/Harlequin's translation tools (actually a mini-RIP) to process them. And they won't immediately translate to "normal" text when you do.

**Raster Image Processor

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