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Participant
February 10, 2021
Question

Cannot remove sections breaks in pdf converted to word doc on macbook

  • February 10, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 4647 views

Please bear with me - I'm old and not too tech savvy.  I downloaded/saved a form on my Mac and converted the pdf to word.  I was able to make changes but I cannot remove section breaks.  I've tried everything suggested on line.  Thanks!

3 replies

Participating Frequently
December 7, 2023

Hi Freya! good news is being tech savy is not important when using adobe PDF becuase even very expericened coders will find a very hard time converting simple documents into microsoft applications.  Unfortunatley we will have to wait for the hard working Adobe team to get to this issue.  The good news is their stock price is on pace to hit an all time high in 2024!  So atleast the shareholders are happy.

 

- Just a fan

Amal.
Community Manager
Community Manager
December 8, 2023

Hi there

 

Hope you are doing well.

 

Please try the steps provided in the MS help page https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/delete-a-section-break-1e12f200-7215-4688-a55a-5130f383dc5f#ID0EBACAAA=macOS and see if that works.

 

~Amal

rc90210
Participant
February 28, 2024

Hi Amal,

 

I came here too hoping for an answer. The issue of Word and PDF documents created by Acrobat's export to RTF / Word feature has persisted for over a decade. 

 

The Microsoft Support page you referred AdAcrobFan1 to provides instructions for removing 1 section break at a time and points out that removing a section break will apply the document formatting following the (removed) section break to the document text to the section of text before the (removed) section break. 

 

Given Acrobat inserts a section break on each and every page it creates using the Export PDF to Doc/ RTF tools,  advising customers who are frustrated with Acrobat's long standing bugs / poor design (which this issue is clearly an example of) to remove section breaks one at a time is not remotely helpful. 

 

If Adobe actually cared about the experience and productivity of the people who use Acrobat / Acrobat Pro it would understand that the predominant reason people want to export a PDF to Word format is so they can edit the document - idseally retaining paragraph numbering and paragraph item / text indending and not so that they end up with a Word doc that (poorly) replicates the page setup and formatting of the original PDF. 

 

If Adobe Acrobat was developed and maintained so that it met the productivity needs of its customers:  

 

1) It would not export PDF documents to unusable "doc" format word documents that employ text boses for text in the main body of the document;and 

2) It would provide users with the option to export to RTF or Word doc without the use of page or section breaks - even if that results in text flowing to a subsequent page instead of remaining on the original page per the original PDF. 

3) When copying text (with or without the "retain formatting" option) It would not insert a paragraph character at the end of each line of text copied)

 

Given Adobe is also the developer of Postscript - the defacto standard for desktop publishing - it beggars belief how these issues can persist for decades and that Adobe can provide such unhelpful and essentially "useless" advice. You may as well advise that the customer retype the document from start, or advise the customer that they try a competitors product such as Google Docs or FoxIt. 

 

Do you not agree?

Participant
December 7, 2023

Amal. This does not work. Is there another way to delete a section break in a word document that was converted from pdf?

 

Amal.
Community Manager
Community Manager
February 11, 2021

Hi Freya,

 

Hope you are doing well and sorry for the trouble. As described you have converted PDF to Word and want to remove the section breaks.

 

Please try the steps provided in the Microsoft support page https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/delete-a-section-break-1e12f200-7215-4688-a55a-5130f383dc5f#ID0EBACAAA=macOS and see if that works for you.

 

Additional Information: You may also refer to the similar discussions listed below:

- https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/removing-page-breaks/td-p/9153664

- https://answers.acrobatusers.com/how-I-remove-page-breaks-q225492.aspx

- https://answers.acrobatusers.com/Remove-Page-Breaks-q36920.aspx

 

Hope this information will help

 

Regards

Amal