These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from one of our experts.

What is Best thrid Party Software to Batch convert PDF to Microsoft Word 2010?

dmalloy
Registered: Oct 20 2010
Posts: 21
Answered

I am trying to convert 1000's of pdf files to word 2010 that has not been labeled correctly so using the built in feature that acrobat has does not allow the tables and colums to convert without going all over the place. I have been looking into getting OmniPage 17.1 by Nuance and they are claiming that they have the best software that will make they coversions with a 99 percent hit rate. Is there really a software that can get this procedure done without having to do a lot of editing? Which software should I buy? Please Help dont wont to waste my money it is a recession right now and I have a lot of nieces and nifews thats asking for a lot for christmas. lol.

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 9.3.1
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
So many things in the creation process can affect the outcome of converting PDFs back to Word so it's difficult to determine how much manual cleanup is necessary. There were several changes in AX to improve this exact feature so at a minimum I would recommend downloading the free trial version to review all the changes.

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

dmalloy
Registered: Oct 20 2010
Posts: 21
I did some research on the Nuance Company and found out that they had a lot of complains about installing the software, bad customer service, and not give refunds as they promised. Do you know of any good software that is more than like to work? I am going to try that AX version also to see if they have taken care of this issue but more then likely its going to probly still be an issue. Getting software that specialize in converting PDF to MS word might be the best way to go. So if anyone can direct me to the third party software that is considered the best around the PDF community it would really be appreciated.
UVSAR
Expert
Registered: Oct 29 2008
Posts: 1357
Accepted Answer
I'm not evangelizing, but the Word export feature in Acrobat X _is_ considered to be the best available. Admittedly in Acrobat 9 it had problems with complex layouts, but a massive amount of work has been done on the code for the new version. Acrobat is unique in the way it can handle PDF structure (tags and reading order markers) to work out how to flow content, whereas most other PDF-to-Word software simply dumps the text and graphics onto the page in sections.

No software can ever make a guarantee about accuracy, as it's totally dependent on the file being converted. PDF files, if formatted and structured correctly, can contain *barely* enough information to reform the original copy, however very few PDFs are that good - so the conversion engine has to make thousands of educated guesses as to what might have been there, based on things like the spacing between characters or the color of text. For example something that looks like a "table" might indeed be a table, but it might just be a paragraph with a background and a border. A human can interpret that by sight, but software has a far harder time as it can't understand the meaning of the document.
sinaer
Registered: Mar 2 2011
Posts: 2
If you wish to convert from MS Word to PDF, then the best way is to install Adobe Acrobat Professional and then install MS Word. It is important to do that in that order, otherwise Word will not see it or you will need to do it manually.
UVSAR
Expert
Registered: Oct 29 2008
Posts: 1357
Not true - in fact precisely the opposite.

Also, this thread is about converting from PDF to Word (.doc or .docx), which does *not* require a copy of Word to be installed. The conversion is done entirely within Acrobat.


sinaer wrote:
If you wish to convert from MS Word to PDF, then the best way is to install Adobe Acrobat Professional and then install MS Word. It is important to do that in that order, otherwise Word will not see it or you will need to do it manually.
dmalloy
Registered: Oct 20 2010
Posts: 21
Hello,

I ended up buying the new acrobat x and it works great with converting the PDF to MS word document. It has an upgraded OCR program in the new version that switches it over almost flawlessly. Only problem that I came across is that some of the documents that was generated showed a picture of the file almost like a jpeg that you could edit some of the tables but other then that it work great. One more thing it also allows a automated batch process with the action wizard to make the process faster.
UVSAR
Expert
Registered: Oct 29 2008
Posts: 1357
There's an option when running the Save As > Microsoft Word feature to automatically run OCR. While this is of course vital if the PDF is a scan, on rare occasions it can be triggered by image content within the a file when you don't want it to be. Clicking the Settings button on the Save As dialog lets you turn it off for those documents.
dmalloy wrote:
Only problem that I came across is that some of the documents that was generated showed a picture of the file almost like a jpeg
dmalloy
Registered: Oct 20 2010
Posts: 21
Thanks I will try that.