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Any software/idea how to convert pdf document to word document?

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  • -1 for no research efforts. it was just a google search away. there are plenty of them out there... Oct 19, 2012 at 11:34
  • pls try to add some more info. Jun 9, 2013 at 9:44
  • @tumchaaditya you're right and I wouldn't ask this question in 2012.
    – tambunan
    May 12, 2022 at 9:50

6 Answers 6

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PDF to Word?

Looks free, Just tried it and it works well for me.

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  • 2
    it sometimes takes a lot of time to receive the converted document, but it works well.
    – alex
    Sep 8, 2009 at 12:47
  • 6
    I guess you should not use this for confidential documents, as you never know what they do with the documents you submit.
    – Snark
    Sep 8, 2009 at 12:48
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Google Docs is now testing a new API feature that uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on images and PDFs.

From Google Operating System:

Google Docs API tests a new feature that lets you perform OCR (optical character recognition) on an image. There's a live demo that illustrates this feature: you can upload a high-resolution JPG, GIF, or PNG image that has less than 10 MB and Google Docs extracts the text and converts it into a new document. Google mentions that "the operation can currently take up to 40 seconds" and a small test showed that the service is not yet reliable: it's slow and it frequently returns errors.

Google Docs OCR

The results are far from perfect and you'll find many errors, but the service is free and it's constantly improving. Here's the result of the OCR for this scanned document:

Google Docs OCR

A Google Docs document can be exported in a number of different formats, including HTML, OpenOffice, and Word:

Google Docs export options

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  • I read Google Drive will only OCR the first ten pages of a document. I wonder if this is true for this import feature.
    – Sun
    Sep 20, 2014 at 22:14
  • I can't find this feature, anyone think it still exists?
    – raphael
    Jun 27, 2016 at 13:43
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Per my answer on SO to Does anyone know of a way to easily convert a PDF to a docx format programmatically:

Convert PDF to SVG (ghostscript will do it) and import that...

...the point being that while Word won't embed PDF, it will embed SVG.

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pdfonline does a pretty decent job.

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Use an optical character recognition program, like Omnipage Pro for instance. It supports PDF as a document input and Word as an output.

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You may also try OCRTerminal which offers free service for 20 pages per month. They have a Beta Desktop Client that seems to be available for use by invitation (you have to contact them and express interest).

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