Convert PDF to Word?

[barrys]

I know there are a lot of these programs out there.

My problem is I have a lot of files scanned into pdf from printed documents, with the original print quality not very good in a lot of them.

They are mostly legal documents and I have to translate them.
As there are a lot of names and addresses that don't have to be changed and I also want to preserve the formatting, I would like to have them as Word files that I can overwrite.

I've tried a couple of the programs available but invariably end up with a huge, non-editable file that opens in Word.

Does anyone know of a program that would help - I don't mind paying for it if there's no other alternative.

[Big Boy]

Probably a silly question, and I know the conversion isn't perfect, but have you tried Adobe Pro? I find it to be excellent so long as there is no formatting within the document. If there's formatting, eg tables, then forget it.

[Big Boy]

Sorry, that should have been Adobe Acrobat Pro

[Homer]

OpenOffice runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can import a pdf into the draw program, make changes and save it as a file that can be opened by the word processor. From there you can export to Word format, though my version shows support only up to Word 2007.

There are some problems with older pdf files. I've been unable to convert some. Google 'openoffice' 'import pdf' to see if this affects you before downloading the program.

Free at http://www.OpenOffice.org

[Korkenzieher]

It may be a bigger job than that - scans to PDF are produced more like an image than a document. That would basically mean the way you are most likely to get it into word is OCR - Optical Character Recognition - software. A quick check would be to do a search for an obvious word in the document. If searching will find words, then you are dealing with characters on a page, rather than pictures of characters.

Add to that is that, that Thai is a notoriously difficult language for OCR - though printed documents (as opposed to hand draft) are more amenable as long as the font is a well understood & supposted one.

[richard]

OpenOffice runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can import a pdf into the draw program, make changes and save it as a file that can be opened by the word processor. From there you can export to Word format, though my version shows support only up to Word 2007.

There are some problems with older pdf files. I've been unable to convert some. Google 'openoffice' 'import pdf' to see if this affects you before downloading the program.

Free at http://www.OpenOffice.org

Tried it and got 380 pages of gobbledygook

[Big Boy]

It may be a bigger job than that - scans to PDF

Sorry barrys, I missed that key word - scan . While Adobe Acrobat has a very good OCR program integrated, again if there is any formatting, it will pose a problem.

[Homer]

OpenOffice runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can import a pdf into the draw program, make changes and save it as a file that can be opened by the word processor. From there you can export to Word format, though my version shows support only up to Word 2007.

There are some problems with older pdf files. I've been unable to convert some. Google 'openoffice' 'import pdf' to see if this affects you before downloading the program.

Free at http://www.OpenOffice.org

My mistake. OpenOffice will edit and save pdfs but the word processor does not import the result. I confused two pdf conversion tasks I did several months ago.

[buksida]

This site works for individual conversions: http://www.freepdfconvert.com/convert_pdf_to_source.asp

Not sure for batch conversions though.

[barrys]

This site works for individual conversions: http://www.freepdfconvert.com/convert_pdf_to_source.asp

Not sure for batch conversions though.

Thanks for all your help.
Tried buksida's suggestion but the program only converted 2 pages and was not rewritable.

The original documents are in Dutch, by the way.
The problem seems to be as korkenzieher said, i.e. my files are not true pdf files, but simply paper images scanned into Adobe Reader arbitrarily - could just as easily be in any other graphic format.
So no OCR is the problem, evidently

BUT
In a last desperate attempt, I tried to open the pdf file in Word (2007) - it then asked me if I wanted it converted, so I said yes.

And guess what, I ended up with a rewritable Word file

So it looks like Word 2007 has a built-in OCR function.

Thanks very much for all your help and suggestions.

[Homer]

So it looks like Word 2007 has a built-in OCR function.

Oh. My. God. Wow. I'll even take back one of the thousands of bad things I've said about MS Office over years.

[simv]

Didnt know about built in OCR in MS office.