Friends,
Can someone inform me how I change a .pdf form to .doc so that I can fill it out before printing?
My OS is Vista Home Premium with Office 2007.
Regards, Peter.
If it's a modern form, you should be able to just type into it.
Otherwise - print it ...
Quote from: MikeDunn on April 26, 2013, 11:40:36 AM
If it's a modern form, you should be able to just type into it.
Otherwise - print it ...
Only if it's a modern form that's been expressly set up with fields designed to be filled in.
Quote from: MikeDunn on April 26, 2013, 11:40:36 AM
If it's a modern form, you should be able to just type into it.
Otherwise - print it ...
Thankyou.
It isn't one I can write into it and my handwriting is the proverbial spider and inkwell!
Since important information is needed I must in some way be able to enter the details!
Regards, Peter.
The latest version of Acrobat Reader (downloadable free) boasts of the ability to convert PDF into other formats, but I think it's a paid-for service accessed via a website.
Otherwise you can get it all on the screen at once, press Alt-PrintScreen (depends on your keyboard) and paste it into Word. You may still have to do some fancy stuff to get your text to land in the boxes on the form.
PDF documents are basically a long stream of drawing instructions, they are not really a "document" format. Some document information is present and its extended over time to allow forms in some cases.
You can also probably extract the actual text from it (with pdf2ascii) as that is present for screen-readers and disabled access tools in some documents.
Other ways to attack the problem are
- print it out. print out some answers in rectangles the right size, cut them out tape them down and photocopy the result
- load it into the gimp (free), which will convert it to a bitmap (tell it 300dpi not the default 100), and then 'write' on it with the text tool and treat it as a picture having text added.
Alan
Without a PDF editor it is not easy as most have stated above.
Also I think some of the cheaper PDF editors are not so good and I doubt you will want to pay £100's for the software.
Even then I think if the document is locked by the creator you still might not be able to edit it.
You could possible size the document (page by page if more than one) to fit the screen.
Then take a print screen and paste into paint.
Clip the picture to remove anything that is not the document itself.
Then using a text box in paint that has a transparent background you can place text in the appropriate boxes or on the lines etc.
You can then save as a *.bmp or better still *.jpg as it is smaller and either print it out or email it directly.
I have used this method in the past and although a bit of messing about is not difficult and works a treat.
Steve
You can use this program - Nitro PDF.
http://www.nitropdf.com/ (http://www.nitropdf.com/)
There is a free trial option which for just doing one or two documents is fine.
It can easily convert PDFs to Word and other formats and then once you have done what you want to them, NItro can convert the word doc back to a PDF.
I've been using the paid for version of Nitro for a number of years for my publishing company, it s great for editing PDF or even just stripping out text and images so they can be used in other documents
Quote from: Trev on April 26, 2013, 03:08:54 PM
You can use this program - Nitro PDF.
http://www.nitropdf.com/ (http://www.nitropdf.com/)
There is a free trial option which for just doing one or two documents is fine.
It can easily convert PDFs to Word and other formats and then once you have done what you want to them, NItro can convert the word doc back to a PDF.
I've been using the paid for version of Nitro for a number of years for my publishing company, it s great for editing PDF or even just stripping out text and images so they can be used in other documents
Yes I have been using this through work for a while now and find it excellent.
Didn't know you could get a free trial of it though. If the free trial works then certainly give it a go it should do what you want.
Is the trial for a limited time perid or limited number of uses?
Steve
Not sure Steve as I have the paid for version.
I looked on the website just before posting the link and it says about a free trial but I didn't look any further.
The first thing to try is to open the pdf (in Acrobat Reader) then File | Save as Other | Word or File | Save as Other | Text (i.e. without formatting).
If both of those produce garbage then ABBYY PDF Transformer is a good, reasonably priced text recognition program (I use it for my translation work when clients supply pdf instead of Word). If the layout is complicated I find it is worthwhile to go through the text marking Text blocks and Tables manually first, but with a straightforward text you can just let it loose in automatic mode.
If the pdf is locked there is a neat tool called A-PDF Restrictions Remover. I've only had to use it twice so far, but it worked both times.
Quote from: keithfre on April 26, 2013, 04:07:36 PM
The first thing to try is to open the pdf (in Acrobat Reader) then File | Save as Other | Word or File | Save as Other | Text (i.e. without formatting).
If both of those produce garbage
Thankyou, what you describe is precisely the outcome.
Regards, Peter.
I have been using the free trial of Nitro PGF for well over a year now, it has even updated itself on a few occasions, it is a wonderful piece of software.
cheers John.
The whole point of the PDF format is that the reader should NOT be able to edit it or convert it to other formats!!
Or at least that's what is was when it was introduced... Nowadays the format has become more sophisticated allowing for electronic completion of on line forms (sound like yours is a failed attempt to do that by someone who doesn't really understand the format and how to use it) and there are ways and means to convert to other formats as others have described above, but they do seem to be hit and miss...
Try this site,
http://www.pdftoword.com/ (http://www.pdftoword.com/)
if I remember correctly, upload pdf, then converted to doc and emailed back to you.
Tony
Quote from: gawain on April 27, 2013, 12:37:16 AM
Try this site,
http://www.pdftoword.com/ (http://www.pdftoword.com/)
if I remember correctly, upload pdf, then converted to doc and emailed back to you.
Tony
Thankyou, neatly done!
Now for the personal bit in filling out the form clearly and legible!!!
Many regards, Peter.