Convert pdf to word / No Arabic!

[abdul sahibm79488992]

I set the language support settings for the Arabic language in Creative Cloud by performing this video to apply the steps.

After completing the steps, I downloaded Acrobat Reader Pro from Creative Cloud. This is in order to download the program with the support of the Arabic language. But when I wanted to convert a pdf file to a doc file, I did not find Arabic language support in the list, as in Picture No. (1)?
Also, in the conversion method by scanning "OCR", I did not find Arabic language support in the list, as in Picture No. (2)?
Please explain to me why? with an explanation of the solution?

من فضلك اشرح لي لماذا؟ مع شرح الحل؟

[Krutikka D]

Hello @abdul sahibm79488992 

I  hope you're doing great, and sorry for the trouble.

Adobe ExportPDF supports the following languages:

English (US)

English (UK)

German

Spanish

French

Italian

Japanese

** Export pdf does not support the Arabic language.

However, you can submit a feature request here -  Feature Request/Bug Report Form.

I hope it helps.

Regards,
Krutikka

[Zaid Al Hilali · Accepted solution]

Dear Abdul-Sahib

Whether you download Acrobat Pro with Arabic Support or without, certain features in Acrobat will support Arabic regardless of your language choice when installing Acrobat.

Both features you asked for (OCR & saving a PDF to MS. Word) doesn't support Arabic as yet.

The Arabic OCR feature in Acrobat is hopeless, and we have no workaround, however, saving PDF to Word document can be done in another way as explained below…

If you are on a Windows machine, launch Microsoft Word, then open the PDF straight inside Word as such Microsoft Word will convert the PDF with its Arabic content, as such you will get a much better result than using Acrobat for the conversion.

You may vote on this feature request for the Arabic OCR

You may also vote on this feature request for the PDF to Word conversion.

[abdul sahibm79488992]

Hello, I was wondering that adobe invented the pdf format, so it is assumed that if we have a pdf file with copyable text, that is, its pages are not images. and we converted it to a doc file using adobe Reader, so there will be no error rate in the text if the text is plain and not decorated.

Allow me to formulate the question clearly, and I hope you will answer it accurately and reliably:
▪Since Adobe Reader supports converting english-language pdf files to doc. And we assumed that we have a pdf file in english with text that can be copied and that the text is not decorated, which means that the pages of the book are not scanned and we will not use (OCR) technology. So, when converting this file to doc format using adobe reader, will there be an error rate in the text?

▪By the way, I have another question: I am thinking about the possibility of financing the Adobe Reader project in order to launch support for converting pdf files to doc in the Arabic language..so how to apply for funding this project to support this language?

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Your question about backward conversion, ie. PDF – Word.

In my opinion, as a long user of PDF format, the answer is how the PDF handles text and other assets on the page or in the document which you're converting to PDF in the first place, and surely which application is doing the conversion ie. AutoCAD, Photoshop, InDesign, Microsoft Office… etc. Whether the user used Adobe technology in the conversion or another technology from Apple, Microsoft, Cannon and what have you. Moreover, we need to understand that PDF is a compression format, so when converting a Word document to PDF, certain internal file structures will be changed in the process to make the PDF as small as possible in file size. Then we have many font issues to address.

All the above in making any PDF will affect later the backward conversion process. So even though Adobe is improving backward conversion with any new version so that we have now some above 85% (this figure is from me) of success rate with English or Latin content, on the other hand we have less than 15% (this figure is from me) of success rate for a PDF with Arabic content. 

I'm not going to defend Adobe at all in this matter. As you said, Adobe created the PDF and they developed Acrobat, they support Arabic in many ways, but are dragging their feet when it comes to these few - high in demand - options. I personally have passed our requests to Arab Adobe personnel in order to share it with the concerned team.

What surprises me is that when the Middle Eastern version of Acrobat and few other Adobe applications used to be localized/Arabized by a French company named Winsoft, we used to have better Arabic support in Acrobat as far as I remember. So I believe our requests aren't that hard to be met.

I have no comment on your suggestion to fund the Acrobat team to consider fixing the above-discussed bugs and shortcoming.

[abdul sahibm79488992]

My friend, your words touched me. I have an important and useful comment on this subject, and I hope that you will work on it and communicate it to the technical team. this will relieve us of these problems in the future.

▪Adobe should release a new version of the pdf extension, so that the support for converting to Doc-Dox format is 100% without problems, and it is supposed to stop and ban companies, including Microsoft, from converting to pdf with the old version. of course, we are talking about a new pdf format, and there is no big difference between it and the older version, meaning that the programs are still able to read and play the old version pdf file. I think you understood what I mean. This new update must be issued, and this is not a strange thing. for example, Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 8 so that people would compulsorily use newer versions so that system-related problems would decrease. Here is the same thing when conversion to pdf is prohibited in the old version because it has many technical problems.

,, There is no point in converting books to pdf for the purpose of preventing theft, even assuming that there is no OCR technology, text can be transferred from the pages of the book manually using writing on the keyboard! so the pdf format does not protect against text theft. If you ask me, I will say that proper, correct, legitimate and legal protection is by preserving the copyright of the book. thus, the author protects his book from theft, so this is the correct and proper way to protect books. as for protection methods by, for example, setting locks and software protections, these are considered useless and unsuccessful methods. and it will cause great accidental damage, because it is usually one of the reasons for converting books to (Doc-Docx) for general, important and legitimate (legal-official) purposes, for example, so that we can translate the book into another language easily, and without problems. fortunately, (Adobe Acrobat Reader) supports converting books, which means that Adobe knows very well that software protection methods for books are useless and cause great harm.

▪I ask for a second feature, and I hope that it will be present in the new pdf version that I suggested, noting that it will help to reduce the size of the pdf books very significantly, and at the same time it will give it a faster browsing speed. since the pages of the pdf book are images that serve as a text background, and this image is usually repeated on all pages of the book or on most of its pages. so why is the image repeated on all its pages, when it is possible to upload one text background image, and make its display programmatically repeated on all the rest of the pages!. ‏like ‏as I said, it will help reduce the size of the book very much and increase the speed of browsing it, and it is considered a giant investment in the field of library servers in terms of reducing the size, as the idea is very great.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

You have valid points there.

Responding to the first point, Adobe cannot prevent others from generating PDF files as the PDF format is not owned by Adobe any more, the PDF has become an open source format and an international standard for quite some time now.

In regards to your second point, I believe if you have a file with repetitive elements such as a logo that shows on each page within the PDF, you can choose the following option in Adobe Acrobat Pro "File >  Reduce File Size" as this option will retain one instance and eliminates all other instances to reduce file size, having said that, your PDF appearance will not change at all.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

You may read more about the PDF file format on this valuable Wikipedia page.