PDF to word on Mac?

[jjpaul]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel Recently I turn to use Mac OS and download some free ebooks as reference for my work. These ebooks are in PDF format and I have installed Adobe reader for Mac to view them. It works well but what makes me confused is that when I copy the contents to my word document (office 2008) but only find they are all messed up, it is a hard work to reformat it. I have Acrobat in my windows PC but they could be used on Mac. Have you come across that problem? Plz give me a hand, I hate to do this manual work.

 

[Rob Schneider]

PDF to DOC format is not reliable nor probably will it ever be. DOC to
PDF is the conventional one-way process. PDF is way to describe the
contents format of a page to a "reader". DOC is a way to describe the
contents and format of document.

Mac has the program "Preview" provided by the operating system features
which allows viewing the PDF documents.

The people who provide these free ebooks probably did not release them
to the world with the intention that people would edit and republish
their work this way. This is why they didn't make it easy to do so.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

 

[Tim Streater]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Recently I turn to use Mac OS and download some free ebooks as reference for
my work. These ebooks are in PDF format and I have installed Adobe reader for
Mac to view them.

Why did you do that? The program Preview should be used for that - and
you can view and make some amount of changes to images with it, too.

 

[Patty Winter]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel
Recently I
turn to use Mac OS and download some free ebooks as reference for my
work. These ebooks are in PDF format and I have installed Adobe reader
for Mac to view them. It works well but what makes me confused is that
when I copy the contents to my word document (office 2008) but only find
they are all messed up, it is a hard work to reformat it. I have Acrobat
in my windows PC but they could be used on Mac. Have you come across
that problem? Plz give me a hand, I hate to do this manual work.

Since you have Acrobat, you could try using its export capabilities
to export the text to a Word file, then open that file on your Mac.
In my experience, that retains the formatting better than copying
and pasting--but I agree with Rob that going from .pdf to .doc is
dicey.


Patty

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

As long is a Strictly Text document with some Graphics it does Okay now
if it originally has Tables or text within some text boxes. Al bets are
off. About 80% of PDF's I've save as Doc or RTF Format have worked out
fine. but the other 20% had some unique Components and they didn't make
the trip very good.

Also on eBooks they may be written in such a way that they can't be
converted.

 

[jjpaul]

Thanks for information. As far as I know,it is not because of the author and security. Because I have just got some ebooks which can be shared on the internet.The problem is when I wanna copy the contents from Adobe reader and Preview, the layouts lost and the graphics could not be selected. I mean I really want to duplicate the contents to word. I wanna all the elements would be preserved. And I have little knowledge, so the programming would be helpless for me. Some application woule be better.

 

[Rob Schneider]

Sorry, but while we understand what you want, you are wanting more than
is easily possible. PDF to Word is not really viable to the extent you
want, AFAIK.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

 

[John McGhie]

Sorry, I agree with the others...

A PDF file does not contain enough information to re-create the Word
document it started off as.

You just can't get a "good" result from PDF.

The best you can do is get the text and graphics out. Then simply apply
Word's styles to reformat the text when you get it out.

It's only a few minutes work to reformat an entire book if you use styles.

Hope this helps

Thanks for information. As far as I know,it is not because of the author and
security. Because I have just got some ebooks which can be shared on the
internet.The problem is when I wanna copy the contents from Adobe reader and
Preview, the layouts lost and the graphics could not be selected. I mean I
really want to duplicate the contents to word. I wanna all the elements would
be preserved. And I have little knowledge, so the programming would be
helpless for me. Some application woule be better.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

Bottom Line: What you want to do simply cannot be done using a PDF *reader*
app such as Adobe Reader, Apple's Preview or any of the others.

As others have tried to point out, PDFs are neither designed nor intended to
be edited [1], nor do PDF files have the necessary internal structure to
carry over to another format as they appear in a reader. If they did, Word
would most likely be equipped with the necessary filters to simply Open a
PDF directly. Think of a PDF as a collection of pictures of how the content
is supposed to be displayed.

In order to even come close to what you want to do would require a decent
PDF *editor* -- such as Adobe Acrobat -- not just a simple PDF *reader*.

[1] Just because an e-book (or anything else) "can be shared" without cost
doesn't mean that it is being offered up freely for inclusion, in whole or
in part, in the work of others... Doing so can still be considered
plagiarism. There's a difference between "freely distributed" & "here, use
any of it any way you wish". If the author has no objection to having their
work used in some way other than how it has been offered s/he will be happy
to provide a copy in an editable form.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac