.pdf to .doc

aslco · 19 Oct 2008 at 12:08

This is probably easy to find, but i struggled. I came across a few pdf to doc converters for mac, but they are all trials or want you to pay. I am yet to find a decent free pdf to doc converter. Is there really no application out there which is free and can do this for mac?

I have a lot of PDFs here so would like something which can convert all of them and not just...say 10, pdfs before the trial runs out.

And yes this is for mac, which is why i am struggling.

likwid · 19 Oct 2008 at 12:50

I was fairly sure what you're asking is not possible and no such app is available. It is possible to slightly edit pdf's, make small changes to text for example, but it doesn't work well. Really the original file from which the pdf was created is needed to edit it.

MagicBoy · 19 Oct 2008 at 12:58

Are the PDF's protected? PDF's are a very good way to protect published documents from being edited by the unqualified...

aslco · 19 Oct 2008 at 14:57

Um, im not sure if they are protected. No passwords are asked for if thats what you mean. Basically its for my mum who is a teacher. It would make her job a lot easier if she could just edit the document in an easy way to do reports.

TriedandTested · 20 Oct 2008 at 15:17

How many are you talking? I have Acrobat Professional here so might be able to help if it's not too many!

aslco · 20 Oct 2008 at 15:49

Oh erm....theres only 3 i think. Each have quite a few pages i think.

Admiral Huddy · 20 Oct 2008 at 15:53

I maybe wrong, but .pdf is a printable image that's irriversable.

likwid · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:20

Even acrobat can't really edit pdf's, unless it has the original file from which it was created. As for creating .doc files, i don't think it's possible.

MagicBoy · 20 Oct 2008 at 20:00

Admiral Huddy said:
I maybe wrong, but .pdf is a printable image that's irriversable.

No, it's a development of PostScript which is a page description language originally used in publishing.

Properly formatted PDFs contain vector graphics, scalable (embedded fonts) and layout information. That said I've had PDFs sent to me at work which were basically bitmaps (and consequently very large).

zeta101 · 20 Oct 2008 at 23:14

Open the PDF in Preview and press command+A (this selects all text in the PDF). Then press command+C to copy the text to the clipboard, finally go to a blank word document and paste it (command+V). You may need to do some minor corrections (remove some extra spaces etc if the PDF you had was rather complicated).

I can do this on leopard, I think it should work for tiger too...

iSam · 21 Oct 2008 at 00:44

zeta101 said:
Open the PDF in Preview and press command+A (this selects all text in the PDF). Then press command+C to copy the text to the clipboard, finally go to a blank word document and paste it (command+V). You may need to do some minor corrections (remove some extra spaces etc if the PDF you had was rather complicated).

I can do this on leopard, I think it should work for tiger too...

Won't work if the pdf is protected.

meghatronic · 21 Oct 2008 at 01:29

Could try e-mailing them to [email protected] or [email protected].

Auto reply.

TriedandTested · 21 Oct 2008 at 12:23

lozzick said:
Oh erm....theres only 3 i think. Each have quite a few pages i think.

Email me in trust if you want the help.

likwid · 24 Oct 2008 at 14:30

TriedandTested said:
Email me in trust if you want the help.

Yeah so how did the pdf editing go then?

TriedandTested · 24 Oct 2008 at 14:54

He never contacted me.

likwid · 24 Oct 2008 at 15:03

Oh, was interested whether it was feasible or not. Have you exported pdf's to doc successfully previously?

TriedandTested · 24 Oct 2008 at 15:13

Yeah, a number of times with varying success. If the .pdf is pretty basic (not LOADS of formatting etc) then it works very well: pictures, tables, formatting (generally) goes across quite nicely.

Pez · 24 Oct 2008 at 15:28

Try Here: http://pdfundo.net/convert/

likwid · 24 Oct 2008 at 15:36

Hmm. Pretty cool!. Just wish I knew about this while I was at uni.