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Dave Swarthout
Known Participant
October 17, 2018
Answered

Converting large PDF file to Word

  • October 17, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 1196 views

Hi,

I have a large (115 Mb) public domain document in PDF format that I want to convert to Word format. The free converters on the Internet that I've tried all choke on a file this size and produce nothing usable. Ideally, the exported file would retain some of the formatting, e.g, bold text (headings) and italics. It is "The Dictionary of Alaska Place Names", by Donald Orth.

I haven't taken the trouble to download a trial copy of Acrobat Pro because most trial packages are limited in what they can do. This is a one-off effort. I do not work with PDFs very much but this particular document could be so much more useful as a reference if it existed in some other format, a database for instance. Having it in Word or Excel format would facilitate my effort to ultimately have it in database format. Failing that, having it in Word would make it easier to search for bold text headings.

Questions: Will Acrobat Pro work on this file?

Will the trial version convert this file?

I'm looking for guidance. Perhaps someone knows of another PDF to Word converter, or even a service organization tht might be able to do it.

Many thanks,

Dave

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Dov Isaacs

Trials on Adobe products are only time limited, not feature limited. Go to Adobe website, sign up for free trial, and try it yourself. You should assume that any converter between file formats will require some degree of manual rework after such conversions. Remember that PDF is a final form format and not a source / layout format and normally doesn't have the context of the original source document.

          - Dov

2 replies

Participant
June 18, 2020

I have a PDF file that 13mb that I need to export to Excel for sorting and such. It continues to fail. Is the file too big?

Dov Isaacs
Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
Legend
October 17, 2018

Trials on Adobe products are only time limited, not feature limited. Go to Adobe website, sign up for free trial, and try it yourself. You should assume that any converter between file formats will require some degree of manual rework after such conversions. Remember that PDF is a final form format and not a source / layout format and normally doesn't have the context of the original source document.

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
Dave Swarthout
Known Participant
October 17, 2018

Thanks Dov, I'll go ahead and install it. I'll let you know if it works.

Dave

Dave Swarthout
Known Participant
October 17, 2018

That worked well. I'm experimenting with searches, etc., in Word 2003. There are a few formatting errors, extra spaces and the like, but they were easily fixed with Word's Find & Replace function.

Thanks again.