Participant

Question

Converting indesign to word...

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
October 11, 2010
8 replies
225828 views

Hello!

Further to my post last week where I was trying to avoid having to convert my indesign doc's to word - in the spirit of 'the customer is always right' I now need to convert these 13 doc's over into word so that it can be edited at will.

I have exported the doc's to pdf, and am looking for a converter tool (preferably free) which I can use to do this. The doc's contain photos, and columns of text - nothing too crazy - I would be really greatful if someone knew of a good one? I have tried www.pdftoword.com but an hour later I still have not received any documents emailed to me.

Much appreciate your help as I am a long long way from competent at all this!

em

tazkerah

Known Participant

you could export an html file from indesign, then open it using word, then you can save it as word document, and it retain all the styles you created in indesign

H

hugoo10610566

Participant

One thing that worked for me was the site

PDF Converter - Convert to PDF Online Free

But I only did a test on free version

T

Thomas Dearie

Known Participant

I should add that Acrobat has now been updated so that saving to Word format is in the following location:

File > Export to.... > Microsoft Word > Word Document

My cursory experience is that the export function seems to be more robust than when originally posted this solution, but I haven't fully tested it.

Cheers!

Tom

Steve Werner

Community Expert

I believe the Acrobat team has made several improvements in PDF to Word in Acrobat XI and Acrobat DC. Quite a bit improved!

B

Barefootstamper

Participant

This worked very well for us -- but would not be good for creating templates as all the pdf text comes over as individual text boxes.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

In the meantime exists a plugin ID2Office, you should consider?

T

TiltdImage

Participant

Good product, but way WAY overpriced! Not as bad as it's competitor which is $99/ every six months. Since it's a convenience product, I'd say $75 to purchase at most, or $9.99 for a monthly subscription. At current cost, other workarounds mentioned here are the much better option. Don't bother with this plugin, it's not worth it.

T

Thomas Dearie

Known Participant

We publish a 1000 page textbook and the authors have asked for the entire book in Word form to work on the next edition.

I used the InDesign > Export to PDF X1a with normal prepress settings > In Acrobat Pro 11 Save as Other.... > Word document (under Options, choose retain layout).

The results were pretty good, with pictures and layout fairly well preserved. I'm not sure how it will handle tables.

Hope this helps.

TGD

Dov Isaacs

Legend

If you are going the route of InDesign to PDF to Word, absolutely don't use the PDF/X-1a settings since transparency flattening will occur and all RGB content will be converted to CMYK which isn't natively supported in any Microsoft Office application. I would recommend the PDF/X-4 settings instead, keeping color in its native color space!

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

T

Thomas Dearie

Known Participant

Thanks Dov!

I was only outlining what worked well for us.

I should have mentioned that we were working strictly CMYK prepress so X1a worked for us.

The layout conversion wasn't perfect, but it was pretty close to the original and saved a ton of work.

TGD

Colin Flashman

Community Expert

if they're just after the actual copy and not the pics etc, rorohiko has a good tool called textexporter. go to:

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/text-exporter/

FWIW, i am NOT a rorohiko employee nor a spokesperson.

if however, they want a facsimile version of the file for use with word (pics, text, fonts etc)... good luck with that. its the equivalent of trying to get the quality of a bluray movie by watching a cinema-rip... (which i don't condone ). one is a word processor while the other is an advanced layout application.

If the answer wasn't in my post, perhaps it might be on my blog at colecandoo!

annettemarieprice

Participating Frequently

I tried most of these today and I found the Rorohiko tool to be the best converter. My goal was to wind up with a file with reasonable accuracy in formatting of the text so my client can make edits for the next edition.

I have several tables and boxed items in my document and this tool managed all those details the best of all the ones I tried. Also a lot of local formatting, all of which were handled relatively gracefully. The resulting file required minimum tweaking before sending off to the client.

erikat8889160

Participant

This follow-up was helpful. Thank you!

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Some people have reported better results exporting the PDF to HTML and opening that in Word, but I've never had good results with any conversion of ID to word.

A

Anonymous

I can't comment on the conversion from Indd > PDF and then PDF > Word. But I've used http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf2word/index.asp on many occasions to convert pdfs I get from co-workers into docs. I've found it to be pretty good.

W

Wilhelm_Georg_Adelberger

Participant

Export INDD as PDF.

Save PDF as Word Document.

You will alway loose quality.

InDesign is not supposed to export to Word.

howard_jonezs

Participant

Thanks Wilhelm! Obvious, and simple but very helpful.

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