Saturday 11 July 2009

How to convert pdf to word

I'm sure many of you, at one time or another, had become very frustrated trying to edit a pdf file. There might have been some text you'd wanted to use for a lesson or a test, but not as it was; it needed some changes here and there. Even after tearing your hair out trying, you'd failed to figure it out. In the end, you had to retype it yourself! True or false?

I'd tested a program called PDFZilla, but found it didn't work very well. Until recently, I've got by with copying and pasting, but graphical items such as images and tables cause a few problems.

However, here's the good news. Now, you can convert a pdf to a word file for free, and edit it as a normal word document. The bad news is that it isn't a program, at least not the freeware version. You'll have to do it online. Here's how.

You go to http://www.pdftoword.com/. You'll see that it's a simple process. Browse to the pdf file you'd like to convert (Step 1).
Choose either the doc or the rtf format (Step 2). Fill in an email address (Step 3). After a few seconds, you'll find the doc file in your inbox!

So, what's the snag? I've tested it on a few files and it works well. However, some characters such as ticks and arrows may not be converted accurately. It's not such a big deal.

If you need to edit graphics heavily, you may find some niggling issues, but other than that, I'm sure you'll adore the product! Just tell your friends where you first heard it from!

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for the info,but online converter is not that stable and reliable.I prefer desktop converter,I'm using Anybizsoft PDF to Word converter, the output quality is pretty good, even protected PDF files can be converted. So I wanna share it.
    http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-to-word.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Melvin - I'll be checking it out.

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  3. I beg to differ, Melvin. I've just tested the program, and it failed the 1st test. It was a file with big letter graphics, and the 'O' was filled in the centre, while pdftoword did it correctly.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the info,but online converter is not that stable and reliable.I prefer desktop converter,I'm using Anybizsoft PDF to Word converter, the output quality is pretty good, even protected PDF files can be converted. So I wanna share it.
    http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-to-word.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks, Melvin - I'll be checking it out.

    ReplyDelete
  6. All the steps related to pdf to word conversion are explained in a nice and simple manner. Many thanks to the writer!!

    ReplyDelete

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