Re: pdf to word doc

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: Elliott Roper (nospam_at_yrl.co.uk)
Date: 04/21/04 

Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 00:49:18 +0100

In article <e3523f41.0404211453.140f3b2c@posting.google.com>, ms_m
<m_graysmith@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am using OS X mac, and when I have a pdf file and "save as" a word
> doc, I find that the word doc is really a form of picture file, and I
> cannot edit it in word. Does anyone know how I can edit a word doc
> made from a pdf file? Thanks

With great difficulty.

I did one this afternoon. It was password protected. In the end I
screen-grabbed columns, passed them through GraphicConverter, OCR'd
with ReadIris, and re-assembled the text in Word. Then I went back and
screen grabbed the diagrams and left it to somebody else to proofread.

It was one helluva a lot faster than typing it all again, but then, if
you knew what a crap typist I am, you would know that is faint praise
indeed.

Even without password protection it is a Royal Pain. Text often forgets
the order it was meant to be read - like it will merge columns already.
Line endings come back set in concrete. There might be subtle little
space thingies between characters.. The list goes on.

Depending on how the document was produced, you may do better with a
full (and expensive and slow and ugly and unresponsive) copy of
Acrobat.

As a rule, you are better off pleading with the author to send you the
source of the pdf. If I want my readers to see how a Word document
looks like to me, before their grotty little PC wees all over it, I
send 'em a pdf as well as the Word. But they get the Word for something
to edit. The pdf is hopeless. 

-- 
I thought I would be the last on earth to mangle my e-mail address.
fsnospam$elliott$$

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