#7 Giovanni
Thanks for the link, Friend.
It worked perfectly on Windows 8.1 64 bit.

It will accept the registration key...but at startup indicates it is a trial version.

I read comment from Karl and didn't want to have a test, but after trying, I see it can covert all words well except fonts, header, footer and shape illustrations. I think I'll keep it untill finding a better free one

Don't really have any use for this software, but after reading the terrible reviews this offering has received I wondered if the software producers do actually take note of what's being said ... Just a thought

A lot of people don't seem to realize that there is a difference between a digitally generated ('printed') PDF and a scanned PDF. The first is easy to convert because it contains all the text elements as text in a digitally readable format. The second isn't as easy to convert because it is a image of the original text and thus has to be OCr-ed to be converted.

Once thing that might help improve the readability and OCr-ability of a scanned PDF conversion...

turn off background images or all images.

If you have images (photos, maps, diagrams, etc.) you can use PDFFill Tools (Free) to break the original PDF into pieces and then deal with the images separately.

#7 Giovanni:

I followed your link and downloaded/installed Nemo PDF to Word. I tested the software with a document I previously created in Word (MS Office 2003) and converted to PDF with genuine Adobe Acrobat software. The 3-page document has multiple images in between text. I just now used Nemo to convert the PDF back to a Word doc. I think this is a good test, since I have the original Word document to compare the final conversion to.

It did well, but not perfect. The images converted properly, and the original format was retained. However, some of the text was red and blue in the original and in the PDF. The Nemo conversion apparently defaults all text to black.

Some of the fonts in the original Word doc were converted to Adobe's "standard 14" when I converted it to a PDF. Nemo retained all fonts in the PDF when it converted it to a Word doc. Of course, they were not the same fonts used in the original Word doc.

Overall, Nemo did an adequate job. Just be aware that it may not retain font colors (default to black).

Free is free. I'm taking everyone's advice and not downloading today's GOTD. My thanks to the always-helpful Giovanni. "Go Gio!"

BEST solution:
1. goto ixquick.com
2. type into the search-box: pdf to word online FREE
3. About 50,199,863 results appearing ...

just a few to try:
http://www.convertpdftoword.net/
http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf-to-word-converter/
http://www.freepdfconvert.com/
http://pdftoword.us/
etc etc

note: I've got heavyweight ABBYY FineReader Pro 11 in my machine, it's only sitting there eating up valuable disk space...
maybe I better uninstall it?

Cheers!

@ Jason, # 14: Nuance has just released new versions of their PDF Converter, but even the previous version can perfectly convert PDFs to doc and docx. You’ll get free form text as a result like you want and not the annoying text-boxes. Layouts will be retained. It works even with forms. However, such software is a bit pricey. This software suits my needs already for several years. I’m still using Nuance PDF Converter Professional 8.1.

I bought the ABBYY equivalent on eBay for $20. It does the text box thing too but is generally pretty good.

>> Does anyone know of a converter that can convert .pdf to .doc(x), where the text will show up not as text boxes, but as all free-form text.

MOO: I would let your software do its thing then I would use VBA to convert the text boxes to regular text, even plain text. There's a learning curve, but you can do a good job this way.

NB: This won't work with the freebie WinWord which doesn't support VBA.

#2 Karl,
Thanks for the samples.
From what I see, this Word-to-PDF transformer has problems with: justification; font substitutions; superscript; linespacing: ligatures; line breaks; kerning; italics; etc.

No surprise, though. Word and PDF (postsript) construct those things in such radically different ways.

But, too many issues with those key elements. I'll pass on this one.


#8 just a bloke,
Considering the content of the posting, I have to giggle right along with you:

"WARNING: ...Avoid buying any of their products, always."

"...not intended as... advice;"

Cheers

A quick question for those familiar with these kinds of products:

Many have mentioned the 'hitch' where, when converting a pdf to .doc(x), the program turns the .pdf text into text boxes, and not free form text.

The program I'm using also does this, and each paragraph of text, in fact, each different 'item', is it's own text box. This makes editing the text after conversion very very difficult. Even the watermark on the page was converted to text boxes, where each individual letter of the words were their own separate text box.

SO, THE QUESTION: Does anyone know of a converter that can convert .pdf to .doc(x), where the text will show up not as text boxes, but as all free-form text. Or maybe even a text box would be ok, as long as it was 1 box, not 5 boxes for each paragraph and separate boxes for bullets, numbers, etc. The formatting should be close, but doesn't have to be 100 % accurate since the point is to make editing easier anyway.

Any help?

Thanks guys!

-Jason

#10 DislikesCensorship
When I first posted that link it was functional but it is no longer working.

Converter programs that use the ABBYY OCR engine are available, I believe Wondershare is one but most definitely the following does use it and produces good results, it is available for about $40.
http://www.aiseesoft.com/pdf-converter-ultimate.html

LibreOffice as mentioned previously is free and does a pretty good job of importing PDF documents but certainly version 4.2 will not save in doc format, just tried it.

I run PDFcomplete at home, and have tried several others in the past including this one. I am not even going to waste time downloading this new version as I did the last one on GOTD.

The program while in concept is nice, really and truly isn't. The factor that everything from fonts to text size can be extremely inaccurate is just disappointing. 90% of the time the software will fail at being recognizable.

If you really want to convert pdf to word ( and not have an image ) just pay the cash for adobe reader pro

#7 Giovanni,
thanks for the link. Downloaded & tested on a few different PDFs. Simple, fast & worked prefect on every one.

Depending for what reason you want to convert PDFs there are two programs which may be useful for you too.

Free Libre/OpenOffice (available portable too) can open PDFs and you thus can change parts of them.

Free PDF-XChange Viewer has options for changing background to white, text color to black etc. in prints and thus saving a lot of ink and improving readability too with bad coloured PDFs.

And I want to remind you that in former comments to PDF converters somebody mentioned that there is still an old version of good old ABBYY 5 available for free:

https://forum.raymond.cc/threads/abbyy-finereader-5-0-pro-for-free.35458/

It's still useful for pic-based PDFs as it can convert pics to text etc. (OCR) - I seldom use this sort of conversion and can't remember details while typing from another OS.

And they mention a 25% discount on actual version which perhaps is no longer valid.

A complete waste of time. Karl's review says it all. This program should have never seen the light of day. #useless

A few months ago I spent a week evaluating PDF to Word/RTF/TXT converters and all the ones I tried were terrible with the exception of Adobe Acrobat X (which I already owned). This product was memorably useless!

After seeing Karl's test, I'm going to check out Abby PDF Transformer. That's similar to the common layout I have to convert, and the way it captures footnotes is near perfect.

@Dok T: A copyright notice attached to a posting in a public forum retransmitted all over the planet? Thanks for the giggle! :-)

Just use this FREE GEM and you are done dudes:

http://www.nemopdf.com/pdf-to-word.html

Enjoy!! ^_^

A tool that performs this conversion (and/or the preferred, PDF to WordPerfect document, WPD is a product far superior to Word) is on occasion an important tool, even when you own multiple releases of the underlying highly over-priced Acrobat product. (Shame on Adobe.)

Adobe Convert PDF to Word: link above leads 30 day trial version. Not appropriate for placement on GAOD.
Aiseesoft PDFtoWord converter: already have it installed on this PC and have used it.

PDF2Word: A freeware also installed on this PC. Sometimes third party converters don't play well with obtuse Adobe coding practices or their "locks".

This is a necessary type of utility. However, it is usually required so infrequently that laying out large money (some of the alternatives suggested above) is not a not viable merchandising plan. Making $9 on a billion consumers is far superior to making $75 or 90 USD on a hundred thousand. And if it doesn't have enough to it to appeal to it that 1 in 7 Internauts "want it", then it is not very appealing in the first place.

No, I did not/am not downloading this offering.

WARNING: Beware of false promises of online monthly subscription software offerings (Adobe Acrobat for example). You pay huge to use the product only during the active subscription. Afterward, you have nothing. The stand alone product may cost more at one time, but it works as long as you have your computer.... not merely when you are being ripped off by Adobe. MSFT and Inuit are two other big offenders doing the same confidence game. No reason not to loath these three companies. Avoid buying any of their products, always.

©2014 Doktor Thomas™. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, paraphrased, nor redistributed without written permission. All statutory exemptions specifically revoked by author. Protected by Amendment, Federal law and international treaty. For educational use only--not intended as legal, medical, accounting nor tax advice; for readers to use as such violates TOS and may entail imposition of financial penalty and other sanctions. Limited license granted for use on GAOD.com.

Gave this a try on a simple PDF file and the result was to say the least unacceptable - It produced garbage, was in most parts unreadable and random font styles inserted mid-word and words that it couldn't convert were turned into a jumble of meaningless letters and symbols. To ask £29.95 (£18.50 approx.) for this is nothing short of robbery. I can mess up my own files quite happily without having to pay to have it done for me. Thanks, but no thanks (only being polite)!

This companies attempts to make a PDF to word converter have been so abysmal in the past I thought I'd wait to see what Karl made of it, no change by the look of it!
An excellent free converter is available at the following link:-
http://unipdf.com/
If you need a good paid for converter ABBYY products are well worth viewing, a company that produces superb software.
I'm not going to waste my time testing today's download.

Big thumbs down.

Converted one file. Took five minutes for LO to open it when it was done converting. Absolutely garbled the text, cutting off words in mid-word, left aligned the whole thing, bunched the text into unreadable paragraphs. Set up text as in grids, not a straight text. Formatting was completely gone. Font was messed up.

While the whole thing did it quickly, what it did was unacceptable. Promptly uninstalled.

A short test - no comment:

Original PDF page:
http://www1.xup.to/exec/ximg.php?fid=78175738

PDFtoWord converter 3.1 today:
http://www1.xup.to/exec/ximg.php?fid=86223873

Aiseesoft PDFtoWord converter - former GiveAwayoftheDay:
http://www1.xup.to/exec/ximg.php?fid=65642010

THE REFERENCE - Abby PDF transformer (75$):
http://www1.xup.to/exec/ximg.php?fid=93924357

Uninstalled via reboot. You may read my old comments:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/win-pdf-editor-2-1/
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/pdfzilla-3-0-6/

Pro
simple graphical interface
easily control PDF to DOC, HTML, SWF or image conversion
allows automatically batch conversion
a sound reminder can be played at the end of the conversion process
does OCR accurately
runs on a low-to-moderate amount of system resources
seems compatible with virtually any kind of PDF file, any version of Adobe Acrobat

Cons
Too many overlaps with the copy
Unable to bring a good copy
Font types, sizes and formats are not cool

All in all, PDFZilla is a good program concerning PDF conversions but it could be better.

Alternatives:
Aiseesoft PDF Converter Ultimate @ http://www.discountandfree.net/discount/aiseesoft-pdf-converter-ultimate
Adobe Convert PDF to Word @ http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdf-to-word-doc-converter.html
Nitro PDF to Word Converter @ https://www.pdftoword.com/