Recommendation of PDF Converter

I have been playing with the Personal Book builder. I am using the Wondershare PDF Converter to go from PDF to Word docx files. I am encountering problems with messed up margins and faulty table conversions. So, I think I need to explore other options using a different PDF converter. Can anyone suggest one that seems to do a great job?

I can print out the PDF document with no problems, but viewing the Word docx files I see a lot of problems. Logos is making a small fix to help me, but I think I need to see better Word docx files.

I am really looking forward to building Logos versions of several PDF documents I have to take advantage of the linking to Bible verses.

Thanks

Dave Heine

davidheine2@___.com

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Rosie Perera

David, you might want to edit your post and remove your email address from it, unless you don't mind receiving spam. Spambots regularly scan forums like this for email addresses. Click the "More" button beside your post and choose Edit. This command is available for a few hours after you post; after that you can no longer edit.

I've used ABBYY FineReader Pro which has a "Convert PDF/Images to Microsoft Word" feature. It's quite pricey at $169.99, as it does a whole lot of other stuff too. But I'm guessing their $79.99 PDF Transformer does what you want with the same high quality as the full ABBYY FineReader Pro.

Aaron Sauer

Try Zamzar! Works great. http://www.zamzar.com/

NB.Mick

I have been playing with the Personal Book builder. I am using the Wondershare PDF Converter to go from PDF to Word docx files. I am encountering problems with messed up margins and faulty table conversions. So, I think I need to explore other options using a different PDF converter. Can anyone suggest one that seems to do a great job?

I'm using Calibre (which is free and converts not only PDFs but a lot of other ebook formats as well), save as RTF and open in Word to make PBs. I tried quite a number of free converters as well as test versions of for-pay products, Calibre was the only one working even remotely satisfactory for me. However I've not tried tables etc., so make your own experiences - I think these tools differ quite a lot depending on the source of the PDF (scanned pages versus printed or saved from another app [and which one], heavily formatted or not, embedded pictures, charts etc).

Mick

EDIT (posted too fast): Dave, you may want to edit your post and remove the email addy - spambots have been known to harvest open forum pages for future recipients of advertisements.

tom

I have been playing with the Personal Book builder. I am using the Wondershare PDF Converter to go from PDF to Word docx files. I am encountering problems with messed up margins and faulty table conversions. So, I think I need to explore other options using a different PDF converter. Can anyone suggest one that seems to do a great job?

I can print out the PDF document with no problems, but viewing the Word docx files I see a lot of problems. Logos is making a small fix to help me, but I think I need to see better Word docx files.

I am really looking forward to building Logos versions of several PDF documents I have to take advantage of the linking to Bible verses.

Thanks

Dave Heine

I like Nitro Pro. Note, note only is it not free, it is $$$$$$$$$$. Still, it does the best job for me by far.

David E. Heine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/343518#Comment_343518

I tried Calibre and found it did not transfer graphics and it could not handle tables. Here is note from their WEB site:

PDF documents are one of the worst formats to convert from. They are a fixed page size and text placement format.
Meaning, it is very difficult to determine where one paragraph ends and another begins. calibre will try to unwrap
paragraphs using a configurable, Line Un-Wrapping Factor. This is a scale used to determine the length
at which a line should be unwrapped. Valid values are a decimal
between 0 and 1. The default is 0.45, just under the median line length. Lower this value to include more
text in the unwrapping. Increase to include less. You can adjust this value in the conversion settings under PDF Input.

Also, they often have headers and footers as part of the document that will become included with the text.
Use the Search and Replace panel to remove headers and footers to mitigate this issue. If the headers and footers are not
removed from the text it can throw off the paragraph unwrapping. To learn how to use the header and footer removal options.

Some limitations of PDF input are:

Complex, multi-column, and image based documents are not supported.

Extraction of vector images and tables from within the document is also not supported.

Some PDFs use special glyphs to represent ll or ff or fi, etc.
Conversion of these may or may not work depending on just how they are
represented internally in the PDF.

Some PDFs store their images upside down with a rotation
instruction, calibre currently doesn’t support that instruction, so the
images will be rotated in the output as well.

Links and Tables of Contents are not supported

PDFs that use embedded non-unicode fonts to represent non-English characters will result in garbled output for those characters

Some PDFs are made up of photographs of the page with OCRed text
behind them. In such cases calibre uses the OCRed text, which can be
very different from what you see when you view the PDF file

To re-iterate PDF is a really, really bad format to use as input. If you absolutely must use PDF, then be prepared for an
output ranging anywhere from decent to unusable, depending on the input PDF.

Doesn't sound to reassuring!!! I'll keep looking. Nitro Pro users on Amazon are complaining LOUDLY about the Activation problems. So far ABBYY PDF Transformer looks like a good candidate.

Brother Mark

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/343711#Comment_343711

I've also used a bunch of the free, kinda-free, and not free PDF converters. The best, IMHO, is from Adobe (the folks who invented the PDF format), who charge a paltry $20 per year for the service. Take a look HERE for the particulars.

Adobe ExportPDF makes the most of richly formatted PDF files with the ability to preserve paragraphs, tables, images, and even multicolumn text..

Kevin Maples

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/343737#Comment_343737

I'm using ABBYY FineReader Pro. It works great!

David E. Heine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/343763#Comment_343763

I found this WEB site with a lot of good recommendations:

http://www.freewaregenius.com/2010/03/06/how-to-convert-pdf-to-word-doc-for-free-a-comparative-test/

Alan Charles Gielczyk

Has anyone found a converter that will handle the footnotes correctly?

tom

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/396061#Comment_396061

Has anyone found a converter that will handle the footnotes correctly?

I haven't, and I don't think we will because a pdf is more like a file that is sent to a printer than any other document.

Mike Childs

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/396078#Comment_396078

I haven't, and I don't think we will because a pdf is more like a file that is sent to a printer than any other document.

I do certainly be such a program could be written, but, alas and alack, I haven't found it yet.

Scott S

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/396061#Comment_396061

Has anyone found a converter that will handle the footnotes correctly?

Alan,

I used Adobe Acrobat Pro to convert an issue of Themelios (downloaded from the Gospel Coalition) from PDF to Word. The footnotes look right, but the program didn't recognize the footnotes for auto-numbering. It is a two step process per footnote in Word to make them right.

Every few sentences in the body text, had a character that was assigned the wrong format. Word's fast format fixed most of these.

Regards,

Scott

Michael A. Lasley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/396244#Comment_396244

Try the products from Solid Documents of New Zealand.

I use Solid PDF to Word for the Macintosh.

http://www.soliddocuments.com/pdf/-to-pdf-a-converter/307/11

Macintosh

http://www.mac-pdf-converter.com

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/396061#Comment_396061

Has anyone found a converter that will handle the footnotes correctly?

I use ABBYY FineReader 11, and it handles footnotes quite well - not perfectly, but it get's most of them and converts them to real footnotes. It also exports to Kindle and automatically tries to create a Table of Contents and footnotes in Kindle as well. It does surprisingly well.

Fred Robbins

MS Office will convert word documents to PDF files. It works great.

tom

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/441363#Comment_441363

MS Office will convert word documents to PDF files. It works great.

Fred, just a fyi... most people on these forums want to convert a pdf file to a word document so he/she can create a personal book.

Robert M. Warren

In case it will be helpful, I will point to a post at my neglected little blog (link in last line of my signature) where I detail how I convert a number of formats into Word for the purpose of making Personal Books. For PDFs specifically, see the last half of the post. It is assumed that long, tedious instructions will not cause you to lose your will to live. [|-)]

I'll have to check out ABBYY FineReader for the preservation of footnotes, which none of my solutions do.

NetworkGeek

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/441447#Comment_441447

I loaded the ABBYY converter, trial mode. I have a 26 page PDF document (less than the 50 page trial size) which it appears to convert. But I can't seem to get it to save on docx format to verify it. It does say it can only save 1 page in trial mode; how useless? How am I to verify whether footnotes work on a document I am interested in?

No way I buy this without testing. I have seen too many converters which really have limited success and are not worth the money.

Mike Childs

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/442164#Comment_442164

If ABBYY handles footnotes in conversion, I will buy it, too. Let us know if you find out

Mark North

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/442164#Comment_442164

You have to purchase Finereader to be able to save more than the first page.

I scanned in 4 or 5 books so far with the Pro version. I am having a technical issue with one of the books. Their support line is a toll call. But for the error I had, I had to use the phone instead of the website way of reporting the problem.

I have a very complex PDF from Tom Horn. It has fold out pictures, text that line the image on all sides, and other tough stuff. I have played with the conversion process a little bit. Haven't had enough time to delve into it deeply enough to gauge its usefulness. I should probably start with something less complex.

Concerning Abbyy Finereader and scanning books - it's great! You get to see the scanned image right next to the text output as you edit the text (no more struggling with the keyboard and book when editing). Really helps speed up the editing process. I still have a lot to learn about this very powerful software. But I like it.

You can save your output in about a dozen and a half formats, including docx. I haven't had much luck getting the results I want going straight to docx. Since I use OpenOffice and it can't save as docx, I save to doc from Abbyy, do my final edits in OO, and then use a online converter to get to docx. The problem with this is (aside from too many steps) that the online converter strips out the images I so carefully kept.

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465124#Comment_465124

I use OpenOffice and it can't save as docx

Have you tried LibreOffice? Essentially the same thing and it saves in .docx.

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/442332#Comment_442332

If ABBYY handles footnotes in conversion, I will buy it, too. Let us know if you find out

It works quite well. I use it often. It even exports it to Kindle with working footnotes.

The only thing that ABBYY doesn't do as well as I would like is recognize Biblical Hebrew with all the little dots and te'amim... but we'll probably need to wait for the Second Coming for that type of feature in any of these programs.

Liam

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465310#Comment_465310

It works quite well.

Devin,

Are you able to get working footnotes from a PDF to a Word doc? Or are you talking about from Word to Kindle format or some other format? If it's from PDF to Word is it just recognizing the smaller print from the larger and linking the footnote symbols? Pretty amazing technology if that's the case!

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465431#Comment_465431

The new Word 2013 is supposed to do a good job with footnotes. I'm on Mac so I can't try it out, but I believe it's a free beta. There are threads about it here on the forums somewhere. I believe MJ uses it. Perhaps Rosie as well.

Room4more

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465608#Comment_465608

The new Word 2013 is supposed to do a good job with footnotes. I'm on Mac so I can't try it out, but I believe it's a free beta. There are threads about it here on the forums somewhere. I believe MJ uses it. Perhaps Rosie as well.

yes the ""trial version"" [EDIT: WORD 2013]is a free download, always has been always will be a free trial version, but to experiemce the full potential you need a license, mac people don't get it unles they run a virtual window......

pdf converter, buy the 20.00 license. pennies on the $$ when you consider what you paid for Logos....

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465612#Comment_465612

yes the ""trial version"" is a free download, always has been always will be a free trial version, but to experiemce the full potential you need a license, mac people don't get it unles they run a virtual window......

pdf converter, buy the 20.00 license. pennies on the $ when you consider what you paid for Logos....

Which trial version are you talking about. TheABBYY is listed at $169. What am I missing?

http://buy.abbyyusa.com/content/frpro/default.aspx

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465431#Comment_465431

It works quite well.

Devin,

Are you able to get working footnotes from a PDF to a Word doc? Or are you talking about from Word to Kindle format or some other format? If it's from PDF to Word is it just recognizing the smaller print from the larger and linking the footnote symbols? Pretty amazing technology if that's the case!

With either PDF --> Word or PDF --> Kindle ABBYY will try to create real footnotes. It will also try to recognize and create Chapter headings in Word (using Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) and in Kindle it will create a real working table of contents based on its attempts! It does a pretty decent job.

The best way I can show you is to share a test. So, I exported the very beginning of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (first document with normal footnotes that came to my mind) to PDF. Then I ran it through ABBYY and exported to an "Editable" Word. Here is what you get. I am attaching both the PDF and the Word.1537.CCC Beginning.pdf 8078.CCC Beginning.docx

As far as I can tell, in this particular test it worked perfectly.

Mike Childs

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465647#Comment_465647

It works quite well.

Devin,

Are you able to get working footnotes from a PDF to a Word doc? Or are you talking about from Word to Kindle format or some other format? If it's from PDF to Word is it just recognizing the smaller print from the larger and linking the footnote symbols? Pretty amazing technology if that's the case!

With either PDF --> Word or PDF --> Kindle ABBYY will try to create real footnotes. It will also try to recognize and create Chapter headings in Word (using Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) and in Kindle it will create a real working table of contents based on its attempts! It does a pretty decent job.

The best way I can show you is to share a test. So, I exported the very beginning of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (first document with normal footnotes that came to my mind) to PDF. Then I ran it through ABBYY and exported to an "Editable" Word. Here is what you get. I am attaching both the PDF and the Word.1537.CCC Beginning.pdf 8078.CCC Beginning.docx

As far as I can tell, in this particular test it worked perfectly.

Thanks so much. I am impressed. That is the best I have seen for converting PDF to Word. I believe that I am sold.

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465798#Comment_465798

Thanks so much. I am impressed. That is the best I have seen for converting PDF to Word. I believe that I am sold.

Looks really good but the problem is not all results are the same. It depends IMHO on the source pdf was created from.

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/465820#Comment_465820

Thanks so much. I am impressed. That is the best I have seen for converting PDF to Word. I believe that I am sold.

Looks really good but the problem is not all results are the same. It depends IMHO on the source pdf was created from.

That's right - certainly not all results are going to be this good. But in a high quality PDF it will recognize most of the footnotes correctly. If the footnote style is somewhat non-standard or the quality of the image is low I imagine it will be hit and miss. I remember one book I converted to Kindle, for example, that had a lot of footnotes and a lot of photos. ABBYY got maybe about 90% of the footnotes right. The other footnotes were seen as part of the text. Honestly I haven't tried converting low quality images, so I can't comment on how it works in those cases.

BTW, here is the same file output from PDF to the Kindle format by ABBYY so you can see how that looks. No table of contents here because there are no chapters, but you can see how the footnotes look in Kindle anyway. 7563.CCC Beginning.zip

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/441447#Comment_441447

I use Calibre to convert them to something that I can import into MS word 2013, and then save as a .docx.

There are macro's out there that accelerate the conversion process. Then build as a PBB.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/467027#Comment_467027

HOWEVER, if the PDF is a scan of something, then this method won't work. At that point you'd need ABBYY or something like that. Some scanners come with OCR (optical character recognition) software that is capable of reading PDF files (and if not, print, and OCR scan might work for the desperate).

I have only come across one PDF that was an image of a page out of a book, and it was a Hebrew Letters chart, so I just saved the image as a .BMP, embeded it in a .docx, wrote some good meta data for it, and compiled it as a PBB... Works so long as I remember what to search for.

Liam

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/467028#Comment_467028

I would like to purchase ABBYY if it is able to convert this pdf to a docx: http://www.archive.org/stream/familyexpositoro1825dodd#page/n13/mode/2up

It is a huge document. It also has parellel collumns (one side paraphrase of Bible (which is the main part of the document) and one side Bible text (which I actually don't necessarily need)) and also a large area on the bottom of each page for footnotes (which I would like). Total there are 3 different text areas that need to be separated (but I only really need 2). I have tried converting it with other services but all the others just blend all the text together. I don't want to purchase ABBYY if it cannot do what I want. Is there any chance anyone on the forums who owns the software can try this out for me and give me some feedback on how it turns out? (A page from the body of the doc is what would be needed and the trial version only allows the title page to be viewed -and not in docx format.)

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/488304#Comment_488304

That is one complicated document... with the additional problem that there is no easy way to download it as far as I can tell.

Doing screen captures of a page here is what I got. By default ABBY doesn't recognize the areas correctly, but if you assign them manually it looks okay.

7178.TestPageDefaultABBY.docx

5710.TestPageManuallyFormattedExact.docx

6153.TestPageManuallyFormattedEditable.docx

Randy W. Sims

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/488304#Comment_488304

I would like to purchase ABBYY if it is able to convert this pdf to a docx: http://www.archive.org/stream/familyexpositoro1825dodd#page/n13/mode/2up

Noticed that clicking the information icon at the top of that page shows formats for: PDF, Plain Text, DAISY, ePub, Send to Kindle

Although, quality seems varied.

Liam

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/488356#Comment_488356

Thanks Devin and Randy! It looks like it does a much better job than I've seen before with even a screen capture. But still a lot of work for such a large doc. Strongly considering... Thanks again!

Dr. Nathan Parker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/488365#Comment_488365

I'm in the same boat. I need to convert a bunch of PDF's to Word format for PB's. Most of them have freely selectable text, but I have a few scans that aren't.

What's the best app for me to use?

Also, what was the $20 license someone mentioned? Haven't seen anything for $20 yet. I'm willing to pay enough (not too much, but enough) for a solid one since I have a lot of converting to do.

I have some clients that could use this as well, so whatever I get I can recommend to them.

Thanks!

Liam

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/488433#Comment_488433

Devin, one more question for you. If the footnotes and chapter headings (TOC) do come out wrong, can you manually set them right inside ABBYY (or change the way it reads the document so that it will come out correct)? Or would you have to make all changes in Word?

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/489086#Comment_489086

I haven't figured out a way to manually correct the footnotes in ABBY. The chapter headings can be done for sure by setting the style. If anyone knows how to do footnotes this please share.I don't think ABBYY will ever pick up the footnotes of that document you want to convert, however... I have only seen it correctly recognize footnotes when the footnotes are numbers, not letters, although I haven't tried much either.

What you can do to manually improve footnote recognition if it's not working well would be to train ABBYY for the types of characters that it's not picking up well. The training works quite well.

And... if you want to do a complicated document like the one you mentioned, where there is no way ABBYY or probably any other product is automatically going to figure out the layout, you would want to use this feature: http://finereader.helpmax.net/en/advanced-features/using-area-templates/ You'd still probably have to move around the boxes a little bit on each page, but this would take care of the majority of the work.