Copying from .pdf to Word - Maintaining page layout

Lucena

Hi all. Had a quick look through the forum and didn't find anything, so here goes.

I have a work report which is only in .pdf and I need to use excerpts from it in its original form, with all the graphs, pictures etc. in the same page layout. When I try to do a copy and paste job (from Adobe Reader 11.0.09 into Word 2010), only the text is copied, and the page layout is completely lost.

Is there a way to copy and keep the layout, as well as the diagrams, photos etc.?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Capt'n Midnight

Simple , just get the original document the pdf was generated from.


One of the main points of pfd's originally was that you could sent out a document that people couldn't copy from , copyright was a big issue early on. It still is. A lot depends on the security settings put on the document when it was first created.

You could try and print screen and just paste as an image.

there are other pdf readers that will pull more info out,

Lucena

I'd thought of that myself, Capt'n Midnight, but the company that provided the report and the place I work are no longer on speaking terms, so unfortunately I can't just ask for the original.

Regarding the other pdf readers, do you have any recommendations? I don't want to have to download each one to see what they can do, as I would have to do at home on my own time as I can't download software at work.

biketard

Do you have Acrobat Professional? It can save a pdf as a Word document (SUPPOSEDLY it maintains the layout, etc., but it will inevitably get messed up). Still, it might be a starting point. I used to use software called Solid Converter PDF, and it was decent enough.

As Capt'n Midnight says, pdf files aren't meant to be editable.

Hoagy

biketard wrote: »

Do you have Acrobat Professional? It can save a pdf as a Word document (SUPPOSEDLY it maintains the layout, etc., but it will inevitably get messed up). Still, it might be a starting point. I used to use software called Solid Converter PDF, and it was decent enough.

As Capt'n Midnight says, pdf files aren't meant to be editable.

You can do it online as well from Acrobat reader for €25 per year which isn't bad, I use it a lot for Excel files and the conversion is usually pretty good.
I'd say graphics will be an issue though.

Overheal

Word 2013 included far superior enchancements to how PDFs can be handled. When I found this out I spent about 20 minutes gleefully pulling PDFs down from websites and replacing words in the articles/charts/graphs with the word Penis.