Can I convert a PDF file to a Word File?

[BobCen]

This question was asked a while back and the person who replied sloughed it off and then closed the question. The original question asked about converting it to a Word or Excel file. Can it be converted to a Word file?
Original question:
"Converting files from PDF to excel & Word [closed]"
asked Nov 22 '12
Minal
Hi My Name is Minal I am downloading LibreOffice for purely business purpose. My question is that can I convert and export PDF files to Word or Excel or JPG image? And will editing PDF in LibreOFfice will leave a “watermark” or any kind of print that will show that the particular PDF is edit ?? Awaiting reply. Best Regards, Minal
Answer:
Closed for the following reason question is not relevant or outdated by qubit
close date 2013-03-11 12:04:25.047366
Hi @Minal, There are several programs that can convert a PDF to a (set of) JPEG image(s). Do you want to be able to edit the text of the PDF after the conversion?
qubit gravatar imagequbit (Feb 3 '13)

As you can see, he never answered the question (other than to state there are programs that can convert to a JPG). He ignored the more relevant part of the question - converting to a Word or Excel file. In fact, the question header did not address a JPG, just in the body - added by the poster - probably as an afterthought!

While there are a few FOSS programs that allow you to edit a few lines of a PDF, they do not handle conversion to a Word or Excel. A few that I have found that claim to be free and do so, only convert a few lines, not the entire PDF (and even that is done poorly). If you want the program to convert the entire PDF to a Word file, then they require you to buy their paid version. Why would anyone want their paid version when their free, partial, conversion can’t even handle a few lines?

So to re-open the question, looking for a reasonable answer (even if it is “NO”), "Will LibreOffice convert a PDF file to a fully editable Word file (or an fully editable Excel file)?

P.S. While I have no problem using “captcha” pictures to determine if “I am not a robot” (although have been accused of such in the past), please make the pictures more distinguishable. For example, if I am to select those with mountains, please make the mountains clearly distinguishable from the other pictures.I could have my set of mountain pictures compared to different dishes of pasta or candy or cakes, etc. rather than other scenery pictures that could possibly been viewed as containing mountains. Even worse is to change to those "captcha"s that use squiggly lines and ask for letters/numbers that are as squiggly as the lines that cover them. In other words, “captcha’”, while not being reproducible by machine, should be readable by a human.

[erik]

To open a PDF in LibreOffice Writer, you need to choose “PDF - Portable Document Format (Writer)” in the File Open dialog:

Then you can save it in whatever format you wish (to odt, to doc, to docx).

[Valdemarov]

Thank you! It works, sadly I couldn’t upvote your answer.

[oweng]

PDF is an output file format. The basic editing capabilities available in Draw are intended to allow for minor adjustment to an existing PDF, rather than allow complete conversion back into an editable input/source file format.

[greengert]

You can open the PDF in LibreOffice Writer, the Save As a doc

[PaoloPelloni]

No, LibreOffice will not convert a PDF to a DOC (or ODT) or so.
What you can do is that if you create a Writer document (ODT or DOC), from it you can create a PDF that embeds the source file. Therefore from that PDF you should be able to go back to the DOC (or better the ODT).

Best of luck.

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If this answers your question please remember to mark it so for the benefit of all the community. Thanks

[greengert]

I believe you are incorrect

[PaoloPelloni]

Why is that?

[blashrkh]

Editing PDFs or saving them first to a .doc or other editable format with LO often treats varying regions as images, which is not ideal. In order to get the content of PDFs you need some good OCR software. The OCR even works in real images and diagrams and also gives a choice to replace visible text with recognised text or insert recognised text as invisible overlay so that the text can still be searchable and selected/copied.

PDFXChange by Tracker Software is pretty damn good. It has good OCR and allows you to It is proprietary software but seems to be the best in terms of editing PDFs. This is a good alternative for people who are concerned about privacy and tracking and therefore wish their OCR application to be completely offline. Despite the name (tracker software), it does not appear to track and works fine blocked with a firewall.

A free alternative OCR software is Capture2Text which also allows you to instantly OCR anything displayed on the screen (including inside 3D games!).

[BobHiggins]

A method to modify a jpeg file will probably work for a pdf. That is to insert a text box over the word that you want to change. Type the replacement word in the text box. I have a problem getting the background colour in the text box to match the outside background colour. I can’t find an automatic way to do this.

[KwahiLau]

PDFelement for Mac - Powerful Tool to Edit / Convert / Create PDFs (including scanned PDF files)

Edit PDFs Like Word - Makes Working with PDFs Simple! - PDFelement

[anon87010807]

The answer is “No”, period. Reason: PDF isn’t meant as a format to store editable content but to view formatted text on any platform.

[peterwt]

If your question is about MS Word then yes, versions of Word 2013 or later can open PDF files and convert to an editable Word document. If your are referring to LO Writer then no, LO will open a PDF in Draw. You can edit it in Draw but it is not a good program for editing a PDF and you can’t save it in Word or Writer format.

I have found a free program that will open a PDF, allow editing and saving in Word format. You can also create a new PDF with this program. It is AbleWord at http://www.ableword.net/

[Shineona]

Of course. You can. I’d recommend Acethinker PDF Converter which I have used for many years. It is a free online tool that lets you convert PDF document right from the browser. And here are the simple steps.

Step 1. Run your web browser and visit Acethinker PDF Converter ( https://acethinker.com/pdf-to-word ), this app compatibles with IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.

Step 2. Click ‘Add Files’ to locate and import the PDF file, you can also drag and drop your PDF file into the app…

Step 3. After you import the PDF file, Acethinker will automatically start the conversion,

Step 4. The conversion will take a few minutes, once it’s done, click the “Download” button to save the converted word file to computer, that’s all.

[ebbandari]

LibreOffice used to convert Pdf to various Word Formats (doc, docx, rtf), but it no longer seems to work! It used to put boxes around each line rather than create a ruler, and that would make it impossible to search or do other conversions.
But It seems that Liberoffice quietly removed that feature. Now pdfs are only converted into images and graph files (I think odg, etc), even in the interactive mode.
This is causing a lot of angst in other forums including stackoverflow Here is a link to that discussion:

Libreoffice convert-to not working

[greengert]

Yes, you can convert a PDF to a word file. Eric answered the question correctly in his answer.

[gabix]

But yours is not an answer. Repost as a comment or delete.