How do I compare two PDF files?
I was thinking of doing the following:
- For each PDF, open it in Draw and save it as .docx
- Use Microsoft Office Word to compare the two .docx files.
Is there a better way?
I’m afraid your procedure won’t work. PDF are considered as graphics files by LO and routed to Draw. Draw sees and manages a collection of shapes distributed on a page.
You can’t export from Draw to .docx. Any attempt to export will transform the file into an image and any underlying PDF structure will be lost, making it impossible to generate a text file from it.
You can eventually copy whole pages and paste them in separate paragraphs in Writer. Writer will probably keep them as PDF “images”. The whole document can now be exported as a .docx. But, you’ll have to experiment to see if Word is able to recover a full-fledged textual document from it.
Thank you for your reply.
You saved me from wasting my time.
Welcome!
What is your Word?
Microsoft boasts that since 2013 they have been able to open PDF files directly in Word.
Yes, Microsoft says that Word is able to open and convert PDFs into editable documents.
I am using Microsoft Office 2021 Home & Business for Mac. It is a perpetual license, as opposed to Microsoft 365.
I cannot get this feature to work on my installation of Word 2021 for Mac and I’ve posted the problem on the Microsoft Community but it hasn’t helped. (For more background on what I’m trying to do and what I’ve tried, see this long thread on a Mac community called TidBITS Talk.)
Do you have any other ideas for comparing two PDF files?
- Can LibreOffice open a PDF and save it as a .docx?
- Is there a better place to post questions about problems with Microsoft Word?
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my post.
I read that discussion - yes, now the catastrophic size of your problem has become clear. (Please accept my condolences on your loss.)
Unfortunately, I will not be able to satisfactorily answer your questions -
- no, the conversion of PDF to DOCX is not the main task of LibreOffice, so this can be done, but the result will most likely also be unsatisfactory;
- perhaps the answer should be sought not from Microsoft, but from Adobe or Apple.
By the way, do you work with files (drafts of declarations) that you received from the tax service? Perhaps the question should be addressed to them - why the taxpayer for his own funds (taxes) cannot receive his information in a form convenient for him (for example, XML)?
Great idea. Can you suggest a site where I should post?
Maybe this will help?
Thank you for suggesting Adobe Acrobat Pro for comparing PDFs.
I downloaded it and installed it for a 7-day trial. It worked pretty well, but unfortunately, in the short time I spent looking at it, I don’t think that it’s reliable enough for comparing tax returns. Maybe I just need to tweak some of the comparison parameters more. It definitely is the best I’ve seen though.
The killer problem is that it costs $20/month. I looked and couldn’t find a way to get a perpetual license, a “classic” license in Adobe’s parlance.
This is basically the same conclusion that Howard Oakeley came to in his recent article, How do Compare Two PDF Documents.
Thank you again for taking the time to read and reply to my post.
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