PDF is a
graphics format that should be considered akin to a printed document. It
was never intended to be backward convertible to a Word document. While
the full versions of Acrobat Professional (not the free reader) offer
the possibility of saving a PDF as a Word document, the limitations of
this function quickly become apparent. For example, if the PDF was
created from a graphic, then a graphic is what the Word document will
contain.
At its
best, the document produced will be a mishmash of frames, making the
document a pain to edit.
There are
third party PDF conversion tools available - as far as I am aware, none
of them free - but the best results are to be had from good quality OCR
software. My preference is
ABBYY Finereader 9
but there are others that can handle PDF format.
Microsoft
Office includes its own rudimentary OCR software, which has a pretty
accurate character recognition engine, but no layout ability worth
mentioning. Given that a standard installation of Office does not
install the necessary components, many Office users are unaware that it
exists. This page therefore concentrates on the installation and use of
the Office OCR product - Microsoft Office Document Imaging.
MODI is
included with recent versions of Office (certainly Office 2003 and
2007), and is essentially the same product with the same dialogs, though
all the illustrations shown below are taken from Office 2007, except
where indicated.
