Converting PDF to Word

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Does any body know of a free pdf to text converter that does not come with a lot of rubbish

Thanks

Oldn

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What do you use to read PDFs? Most pdf readers have a text select/copy option you can use to paste into a text editor.

Jerry

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I use PDFMate PDF Converter for this purpose (pdfmate.com, also on CNET).

They have a free version. It does come with a bunch of junk, but the install program is refreshingly upfront and cheerfully lets you deselect what you don’t want and still installs a fully functional version.

I run it under XP; when I tried installing it on Win 7 it installs and runs but the “Convert” button is missing. Works fine in XP mode virtual machine under Win 7 Pro or in native XP.

Jock

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Thanks chaps for getting back to me.

Sorry I should have said I am on XP

The pdf reader I use is Foxit Reader Pro, and there is a Select Text and Save Icon but on this file it does not work.

I also have Lexcycle Stanza which I use for converting pdf files to Word you just open the file and save as ***.doc and that is it, but not this file, it goes through the motions but the file is blank, but for a few small squares on some of the pages.

Jock does PDFMate open all pdf files?

P.S.

I also have Doxillion Document Converter and this again goes through the motions, but the file it saves is empty.

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Chect the Security settings for the file in Foxit. It may have been set to prevent copying.

Jerry

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I haven’t had any problems opening PDFs with PDFMate, including most recently a 4.7 MB price list with a lot of images and graphical elements on which it did a good job of extracting the text, keeping related text together and formatting into a pretty consistent text format.

I was pleasantly surprised. There may be better programs out there, but most freeware versions are crippled in some way.

Jock

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Hi Jerry

Could not find Security Settings?

The snap shot works, but not the Select Text

I have had a thought; I can convert some PDF files and not others I have about 3 file I want to convert but cannot convert.

Could it be that the ones I cannot convert are a scanning of a page saved in say jpg and are not a page of text?

Is the a way of removing these from the pdf file

Thanks

Oldn

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I don’t use Foxit so I’m not sure where it’s located. In Pdf Exchange which I use, it’s under File > Document Properties > Security tab. If you have a File menu item, see if it contains document properties. Or search help for document properties.

The jpg idea is a possibility but I still think the author set document security to prevent copying.

Jerry

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Hi Jerry

Thanks for getting back to me

Will Pdf Exchange remove jpg files.

I have been looking a one of the files they are House of Common Papers dated 1845
Report on local Charities.

The one who made the pdf file typed on the top where it came from the page number etc.

This I can copy in text but not the rest of the page.

I think the only way out is to print and the scan with OCR etc

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PDF Exchange is a Reader and won’t remove jpg files. It does have a snapshot tool that will allow you to select and copy a graphic object. Foxit should have a similar facility.

You may be right in that you will have to resort to OCR

Jerry

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Hi Jerry

Yes there is a snapshot in Foxit but there is some thing like 20 pages to do.
I think I will do the OCR

Thanks again

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You’re welcome.

Jerry

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There are numerous free PDF to Word/text converters out there which would do the job as long as the PDF is in text rather than a graphic (Wondershare, PDF Area, bioPDf, Some, etc). If the subject is a graphic Wondershare have a PDF editor which has an inbuilt OCR function but the OCR plug in costs around $80. i haven’t tried it but it may be worth it for lots of documents.
But I think the best of them all for either graphic or text is FreeOCR http://www.freeocr.net/ . Simple, easy to use and accurate. Only requires you to organise the new page layout to look like the original if that is a requirement. And it’s free. No need to print and scan and works for multiple pages.

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You could also use the free pdf to Word convertor from Nitro.
Go to their site: http://www.pdftoword.com , upload the file you want to convert , fill in your email-address and the two cptcha words.
The converted file will then be emailed to you. They have also a paid desktop version which you can try for two weeks.

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I suggest you try this one:

FREE from PDF to Word Converter Download Online | UniPDF
http://unipdf.com/download/

As a 100% FREE all-in-one PDF converter software, UniPDF is designed to make it extremely easier for you to convert PDF files not only to word documents, but also to images, HTML, or plain text files. UniPDF supports produce high quality word documents out of PDF files in batch mode. Conversion only takes seconds to complete! Stop wasting time on online PDF to Word tools while you can do it easily and fast with a FREE desktop utility!

Frank D

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I suggest you try this one:

FREE from PDF to Word Converter Download Online | UniPDF
http://unipdf.com/download/

Frank D

Have tried this one and found it to be very basic. Does not have an OCR process so can’t handle text as a graphic in PDFs.

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hey ive tried a couple of these but im stil searching for a couple but none do it properly :/
ive been using http://pdftoword.pro/ but as the other it only converts plain text..
does anyone have a good one that does everything for free?

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Try pdf2word – a freebie.

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Word 2013 will convert PDF to .docx

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Some PDF files are pure images, and some contain text. If its a pure image, you won’t be able to convert it to a word document, unless you have a program with OCR capabilities.

If you can highlight sections of text in the PDF document, then it can easily be converted to Word format. If you can’t highlight sections of text, then you’ll have to OCR the document.

OCR is not an exact science, so check the results after converting it.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Thanks chaps for getting back to me.

I have two free PDF converters they both did a good job before, but when I tried to convert a couple of my latest files neither programs would do it. I thought in might be a pass worded, then I open it with FOXIT READER the went to A icon which can copy words off a PDF file, this would not work but the camera icon did but this was a picture of the text not text.

Looking through both files I realised that both were photos of a page not the text.

What I really want is a free program that will get say a jpg out of a pdf

One of the files as 20 pages I have printed them out and I have OCR-ed them and, I am now on the last page of the first file.

Thanks again

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I refer you again to my previous comment #13. (Good number).
No need to print out your document
Free OCR does it all. But, as with any OCR, you may need to edit the result

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Thank You MALAUS

I went to http://www.freeocr.net/ and down loaded FreeOCR.

To give it a real test, I have a JPG of a page printed in 1845, it copied it in to text, with some mistakes, but no more that if I had printed it and then OCR’d it in my scanner.

It also did the same for the files I was trying to convert from pdf to word which I found was a photo of the pages, it did all 21 pages in one go in just over a minute.

But it OCR’d the pdf with out my scanner on.

Brilliant I cannot believe it

Thank again,

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Glad to be of help. It’s a great little program I use a lot.

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You may get lucky, however I really doubt that you will find anything better than what is already listed in this thread in the “free” category.
pdftoword does a good job on text based pdf files, as does the free version of pdfxchange which includes a good OCR, similar to freeocr.net.
You may want to try libre office with an OCR add-on also.

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