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Acrobat to Word problem

New Here ,
Jul 26, 2020 Jul 26, 2020

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I have read that this can be done BUT ...

 

I have an ID book of 140 pages and need to translate in to Word. I export it as a PDF and close ID. I then open it in Acrobat and go to export it as a Word document. Unfortunately it fails everytime.

 

I get the message "The specified file could not be written to. It may be in use."

 

I have closed everything else on my MAC. Thoughts????

 

NOTE: The document is totally text.

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Edit and convert PDFs , General troubleshooting , How to

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Community Expert ,
Jul 26, 2020 Jul 26, 2020

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Quote: ""I get the message "The specified file could not be written to. It may be in use."

 

It means that your computer system says that the file is in use by a program on your computer, so it can't override it. Suggestions:

  • Try giving the new export-to-word file a new name.
  • Restart your computer (to flush out any memory), open the PDF, and export it to Word.

 

Question: SInce you're starting with an InDesign file, why not export to Word directly from InDesign? By pass Acrobat and PDF entirely.

 

 

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer & Technologist for Accessible Documents
|    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

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Community Expert ,
Jul 26, 2020 Jul 26, 2020

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See this article.

https://redokun.com/blog/indesign-to-word

 

If you got this error, “The specified file could not be written to. It may be in use”, try to save the exported file in a different folder. That generally solves the issue.  If you have any other error, try saving the file in a different folder with the Word 97 - 2003 Document format.

 

Also don't expect 100% perfect results.  Keep your InDesign layout simple and the resulting MS Word document should need only a little re-working.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

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New Here ,
Sep 05, 2021 Sep 05, 2021

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I am having the same issue but running VBA Excel procedure. A manual process to export file to Word Document does not raise any error. Smooth.

 

A few days  ago this does not happen. Might it be related to security setting somehow?

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New Here ,
Sep 06, 2021 Sep 06, 2021

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A couple of steps will eventually solve the issue for anyone interested :

1/ Make sure that Thumbnail Preview is disabled in Acrobat (https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/enable-pdf-thumbnail-preview-windows-explorer.html)

2/ Make sure that in your Window Explorer, thumbnail preview is also disabled (https://kb.foxitsoftware.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046399271-How-to-disable-the-PDF-thumbnail-preview...)

3/ Enable trusted location for Acrobat (Edit>Preferences> Security (Enhanced))

4/ Enable trusted location for Excel application.

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New Here ,
Sep 01, 2022 Sep 01, 2022

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Hi, this did not work. The code runs on my machine but on my client's machine its giving the error of file may be in use. I triedd this on another computer with acrobat pro DC and it works fine. Any idea what else could cause this ?

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