How to export comments from Acrobat to Word using Acrobat X or XI

Learn how to convert PDF to Word or convert PDF comments to Word (Windows only).

By Donna Baker – March 19, 2012

 



In this tutorial, learn how to convert PDF to Word using Acrobat X or XI. Exporting comments from PDF to Word enables you to revise the original Word document automatically. This is a Windows-only feature.

View transcript

How to export comments from Acrobat to Word using Acrobat X or XI

Donna Baker – March 19, 2012

Here’s a Word document we’ll use in Acrobat for a PDF review. Then we’ll bring those comments back to Word and make the edits automatically—yes, it is very cool. In Word, click Create PDF to export the file. Open the file in Acrobat. You can add any sort of comments you like to the file, just like a regular review.

Only these Comment tools make edits in your file. Click Strikethrough Text, then click and drag the tool over the text you want to delete. You see the deletion mark over the text.

Move to your next edit location. Click Replace Text, then click and drag to select the text to replace. Click the comment’s field and type the replacement text.

Let’s add one more edit. Click Insert Text at Cursor and click the page where you want to insert new text. Click the comment’s field and type the text to insert.

Save the file, and it’s time to send the comments to Word. Click Options > Export to Word. A dialog box opens that explains the import process. When you’ve read the information, click OK.

In the next dialog box, click Browse to locate and select your Word document. Click Continue. The Import Comments dialog box opens, and lists the commented PDF file. Now the Word file shows on the dialog box—if you like, click to track the changes in Word.

Click Integrate Text Edits to start changing text. Acrobat and Word process the comments and you see them added to the Word file. The summary lists the types and number of comments. To save a mouse click for each edit, click Automatically go to next. The dialog box lists the changes to be made (the Note comment isn’t a text edit).

Click Apply. The first edit deletes the highlighted text.

Click Apply. The second edit highlights the text for deleting and shows the new text. Do you see the edited text?

Click Apply. The third edit inserts new text at the cursor. Here’s the third edit.

Read through the summary of the changes made, and click Done. Save your edited Word document!



Products covered:

Acrobat XIAcrobat X

Related topics:

Export PDFs, Review and Comment

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6 comments

Comments for this tutorial are now closed.

Lori Kassuba

3, 2014-07-09 09, 2014

Hi Andi W,

Roundtrip commenting only works when you start from Word and create a tagged PDF file.
You can, however, use the import/export commands to move the comments between PDF files. Then once you have all the comments on the master PDF you can create a comments summary.
Also, if you send the Journals out using the “Send for Email Review” then Acrobat will take care of managing all the returned comments for you.

Thanks,
Lori

Andi W

4, 2014-07-08 08, 2014

how does this work if the pdf was not created in WORD…. ? I get a error message in Acrobat professional, that exporting comments (made directly in a pdf) cannot be exprorted to WORD ....? I will need / or maybe many people who have to make comments in a Pdf (e.g during the review process of scientific papers) and have to provide their comment as a summary in a online form, but cannot upload a pdf with comments but have to do the silly way of creating text files for summarising the “review of a paper” and provide this to the Journals…..

Lori Kassuba

5, 2014-04-01 01, 2014

Hi Bryan,

As mentioned in the description, you can only export “comments” to Word using Acrobat (not the free Reader) on Windows.

Also, this particular video does not contain any audio.

Lori

Bryan

3, 2014-03-25 25, 2014

Same as comments 9 months ago.  The sound does not work, so difficult to follow.  Do you need to have full Acrobat not just reader?
How do I export the comments somebody has made on my pdf into a table in word or excel so they can be tracked, replies given and closed out?

donna baker

6, 2013-07-15 15, 2013

Hi Harry -

Sorry you’re having problems figuring out the video. It shows work in both Word and Acrobat. If you click the View Transcript link below the video you can see all the captions from the video at one time, which may help you.

donna.

Harry Binswanger

5, 2013-06-29 29, 2013

I have no idea what you are doing. There’s no audio, and it’s completely unclear which program you are in (Word or Acrobat) and what’s going on. I gave up after a few tries at slowing this down and figuring it out.

donna baker

2, 2012-05-22 22, 2012

Hi Elizabeth -

Thanks ;)

donna.

Elizabeth Streed

11, 2012-05-18 18, 2012

Fun tutorial that takes a multi-step process and makes it seem easy-to-do.

Comments for this tutorial are now closed.