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pdf help...

by ruis2002
5 replies
I'm sorry I don't know how to search the threads to see if anyone has posted anything about this before...

I am working with a public domain document (published by a US Federal Government agency). It is a pdf file. Unfortunately, it contains many essential tables and charts and when I try to convert the file to a Word document, it loses all the pictures, and all the formatting. I don't mind as much about the graphics, but the tables were really essential to the information presented in the ebook, so I am stuck with manually formatting those unless anyone has a better suggestion? I really would rather not have to do it manually, since it is a couple hundred pages long, and it would take me weeks to do it, trying to fit it around my job (I work full time, I don't do this ebook stuff full time). I really need a way to crack this stupid pdf file and get the tables out of it so I can copy and paste them into Word as I edit the rest of the text.

I have heard there might be a way I could crack the pdf so that I can edit it directly, but I have NO IDEA how to do this!!

If anyone has any suggestions of a way to do this quickly, please let me know!!

thank you,

Vicki
#pdf
  • Profile picture of the author Sean Kelly
    There is a small chance that if you import the PDF into OpenOffice you just might be able to preserve your tables.

    Then you can edit your document as you wish.

    Sean
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  • Profile picture of the author rlnorthcutt
    If you have Adobe PDF (and the PDF is not locked) then you might be able to cut and paste.

    Two other options spring to mind:

    1) Recreate the tables by hand, or pay a few bucks on RAC to have it done
    2) Take screenshots of the tables and insert them as images (CTRL+PrntScrn, and then paste into graphics program for editing)
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  • Profile picture of the author rosetrees
    Google "pdf to word convertor" and see if the results are helpful. Won't post them here
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  • Profile picture of the author sparrow
    you might want to look at your pdf again

    even thou the federal government is publishing this, they pay private companies to generate information for them many times and parts of the information they offer to the general public is not into the public domain sector

    this could explain why the pdf is locked because you should have the ability to open it

    as it was mentioned if you have open office you might be able to get what you want worth a try

    Ed
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  • Profile picture of the author getsmartt
    Converting tables from PDF to word or any other document can often be troublesome. A couple of tricks you might try...
    1. Copy the table from the PDF into Excel or another spreadsheet program, this will sometimes format better, it is then simple to copy the excel spreadsheet into word.
    2. Take a screen shot of the table and paste it into word as an image.
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