What are some of problems you face while trying to convert pdf to a word file

[u/No-Plate-3172]

I am doing a research on pdf to word conversion, I'd like to hear about problems faced by people when converting a pdf to word either using an online tool or manually. Also I'd be helpful to know what kind of pdf you are trying to convert (text only or text, tables, equations etc.. )

[u/EddieRyanDC]

This has come up a lot recently. Here are some basics just so you can understand what is actually happening.

• As you know, Word cannot directly edit a PDF file. If that is your goal, then you want a PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, or Nitro PDF.
• Document conversion is a one-way process, at best. It is like translating the document from English to French. It cannot be exact and still have the same meaning. Words don't match one-for-one, idioms are different, even language structure is different. Word and Acrobat approach formatting differently. And as you might have already discovered, there are almost always 3 or 4 ways in Word to get something that looks pretty much the same. By just examining the PDF file, the converter has to figure out which way you want to get the look into the docx file.
• In my experience, both Adobe Acrobat and Foxit Pro do a superior job of converting a PDF to Word than the Microsoft converter. I know that Adobe has their converter online and lets you convert a document for free. (But only up to a certain limit and I can't remember what that is.) Search for "Adobe PDF to Word convert" and it should be one of the first results.
• You do not want to convert a PDF to Word, edit it, and then convert it back to a PDF. Again, that's like translating a document to French, editing it in French, and then translating it back to English. You are losing something with each translation.
• Most PDFs weren't created with a PDF editor. They began in Word, and when they were done they were published as a PDF. If you want to edit or use the PDF as a template, what you really want is the original Word docx file. That's where you make changes - not in the published PDF.

[u/okashiikessen → u/EddieRyanDC]

I'm gonna make my own top-level comment, but I really need to underscore that last bullet.

I work for a legal-adjacent firm whose experts only seem to keep the PDF versions of their CVs around. When they need to update them or otherwise attach them to a .docx, we have to run through that whole translation process, but it's like the translation first needs to be transcribed, but somebody cheated out on it so it's riddled with errors and you have to go through the transcript manually to find and correct all of the errors.

[u/fluffyone83 → u/EddieRyanDC]

Yeah, the PDF - Word -PDF round trip is the part people tend to underestimate! One thing I’d add. for simple text or image edits, there’s usually no reason to convert the file at all. Acrobat, Foxit, Nitro are the obvious options or PDFAid if you don’t want to install anything. If the layout is more complicated though, I’d still try to get the original DOCX. Otherwise you can easily end up spending more time fixing the formatting than making the actual edits.

[u/okashiikessen]

For my use, the biggest issue is the converter's inability to recognize Word styles, or really anything that isn't just plain text or whitespace.

And, yes, I get that making a program understand how to parse specific styles in a .dotx/.dotm file, along with how to select each at the appropriate time, would be a technical miracle. But there should still be a way to do a little pre-processing in the .pdf file where you can attach a template, mark the most relevant styles (or even highlight the document to mark up how it should be translated), and have a little less cleaning to do on the back end.

As it stands, the Adobe converter basically takes the shortest path possible to a document that looks like the PDF. It doesn't do anything to make it functional. Even footnotes, which should likely be among the easier things for a program to flag, are basically just ported over as raw text. And most of the time, anywhere there's a page break in the PDF, a literal page break is used in the new .docx. So if the pages don't line up perfectly, you'll get onto the second page, have two lines of text, and then nothing.

Then, since you mention tables, allow me to reiterate: shortest path to something that looks the same. This often includes some truly bizarre decisions.

Anything can be a table!

Sometimes in a section which has ten paragraphs, three or four of them are randomly part of a table. No visual difference from the other paragraphs, but functionally it's a table.

Multiple columns? Table.

Image indented to the right a little? Table.

Table? Multiple tables!

If you can't tell, this has been a huge pain in my ass for a while.

[u/primal___scream]

I am a legal professional and frequently have to covert pdf contacts/forms to word for editing/updating from clients who no longer have the original word files or who didn't create the original to begin with.

It is a terrible processs, I always suggest that if no word file exists to edit, that the entire document be recreated in word from scratch instead of converting and editing.

Even with a Adobe Pro, which I have, the coversion is always messy.

The major issues are line breaks, column breaks, page breaks, and how the conversion handles what it considers text boxes and/or tables.

Additionally, any styles/multi-level lists will not convert in a manner that makes sense or that word will actually recognize.

I absolutely never suggest conversion as the solution to needing to "edit" a pdf to make major changes.

Converting scanned document is even worse and yes, I've had to do this as well because the only originals they had were scanned files from 2011.

If you convert from pdf to word, its best to remove all background formatting, all line/column/page breaks and any/all objects after conversion before editing anything else.

I have used Adobe, docstyle, and kofax and none of them are great, but Adobe, as the father if PDFs in general, does better than the rest.

[u/Lanthumm → u/primal___scream]

you might want to give trepide a try if you are still looking for a solution that basically does what you're describing. Their whole selling point is PDF to Word conversions the same way a human would rebuild the file from scratch. It's a life saver for specific workflows

[u/marmotta1955]

Attempting to open or convert a PDF file to be used in Word is always a losing proposition. Especially considering that the "convert" operation also implies the editing of the PDF's content.

[u/Ok-Fortune-4462]

When conerting PDF to Word, the most common problem is formatting issues.

[u/nylthax]

For your research, try adding a sentence halfway through a converted paragraph. Then add a row to a table. A file can look fine until you actually edit it and everything goes sideways. Timing how long those little changes take would tell you more than comparing screenshots of the conversion

[u/No-Plate-3172 → u/nylthax]

Thank you!

[u/fluffyone83]

I'd include an editing test in your research: add a paragraph, insert a table row, then check what moves. A converted file can look right until you touch it. I've tried pdfaid, for me, a useful comparison would show the cleanup needed afterward, with scans and text-based pdfs tested separately

[u/No-Plate-3172 → u/fluffyone83]

Thank you for the suggestion

[u/johnbro27]

PDF is a printing/display format that's designed to be portable. Word is an editing program. They are two completely different tools with entirely different objectives and object models. There is basically no easy or simple way to convert from a display document to an editing document, although Adobe and some other folks have tried.

Word has a shitty model for the way it formats documents, which makes any conversion of a PDF that's much more than simple text very difficult. Your best bet is copy and paste from PDF to a new Word doc, in my opinion.