by David R. Mankin
PDF files, by their very nature, are a sophisticated, highly flexible and capable file format. I have been asked by dozens of clients and students over the years to show them how to export a PDF to a Microsoft Word document.
In the early days of Acrobat, it wasn't necessarily the simplest thing to do. In Acrobat 8's interface, we finally had a large and rather obvious Export Task Button. In Acrobat 9, the task button is gone, but the Export command still lives under the File menu.
A Word document exported from a PDF file is usually a rough sketch, in my experience. I have logged many, many hours reworking these files into usable documents. Sometimes the cleanup work seems nearly insurmountable. In these cases, I will then ask Acrobat to create a plain-old text file, essentially a document without any real formatting. To do this, I choose File > Export > Text > Text (Plain) for the most fundamentally unformatted document. I will then open this text file in Microsoft Word, and finally apply proper formatting.
The Export command has lots of file formats to explore. You can export a PDF file as a Word document, RTF, XML, HTML, various image formats, Postscript (EPS too), PDF/A, PDF/X and PDF/E. If you need to export multiple files, there's an option to do that in one task versus opening each file individually.
Acrobat is loaded with surprises. Want to learn more? Sign up for one of my Acrobat classes.
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About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that wasn't enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe Acrobat.
Hi David,
Do you by any chance know of any way to automate the export command for example i’ve created a pdf with forms to be filled in to make an order, i may be recieving up to 30 a day and i want an automated way (or as little user input ad possible) to export to plain txt file, Because from the txt file i will have software written to auto create order picking lists and invoices into our stock system.
Any help on this would be much appreciated
Kind Regards
Mark Powell.
Hi David,
Do you by any chance know of any way to automate the export command for example i’ve created a pdf with forms to be filled in to make an order, i may be recieving up to 30 a day and i want an automated way (or as little user input ad possible) to export to plain txt file, Because from the txt file i will have software written to auto create order picking lists and invoices into our stock system.
Any help on this would be much appreciated
Kind Regards
Mark Powell.
Hi David,
Do you by any chance know of any way to automate the export command for example i’ve created a pdf with forms to be filled in to make an order, i may be recieving up to 30 a day and i want an automated way (or as little user input ad possible) to export to plain txt file, Because from the txt file i will have software written to auto create order picking lists and invoices into our stock system.
Any help on this would be much appreciated
Kind Regards
Mark Powell.