Try a free program called FoxIt Reader. If I remember correctly you can take a
pdf and save it as a word document. After it's in Word format, you can save it
as odt.
The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or
coming back with excuses. ~~ Napoleon Hill
On Friday, December 15, 2023 at 01:11:59 PM EST, William Morder
<doctor_conte...@zoho.com.invalid> wrote:
There is perhaps a way to do this, but it's probably for Linux only. And even
so, if you can do it, it probably won't be quite what you want (that is,
pdf-to-odt format).
It's possible to extract the text from a pdf. The Linux tool is called
pdftotext, and there are probably applications like it for Windoze and the
rotten Apple, but again, they only extract text.
If I were faced with this problem, I would try copying the text from the pdf,
if your pdf reader will allow it. (Again, I am running Linux, so this usually
isn't a problem.) Then I would paste the text into a blank odt document, one
paragraph at a time. Or -- if the document isn't too long -- I would print
out the pdf, or open it in your pdf reader, then type it in by hand.
I know this probably isn't the solution you want, but there really aren't many
other solutions. A pdf document is essentially a photograph of a text
document. The actual text in the document is now only a picture of each page.
Good luck!
Bill
On Friday 15 December 2023 09:33:18 Rory O'Farrell wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Dec 2023 17:07:44 +0000
>
> "W. Robert J. Funnell, Prof." <robert.funn...@mcgill.ca> wrote:
> > I assume that by 'totally distorted' Yvonne meant that the text was
> > present but the formatting was scrambled. If that is the case, I don't
> > think that optical character recognition (OCR) software would do any
> > better, and it might introduce errors in the text itself.
> >
> > I'm not aware of any better solution than using PDF-to-text conversion
> > software, which is what I assume the Best Buy people did. It might be
> > worth looking for such software that does a better job of reproducing the
> > original formatting. In my experience, a fair amount of manual editing is
> > required, depending on how complicated the formatting was.
> >
> > - Robert
>
> Almost every OCR program which produces plain text will require substantial
> reformatting, which the proposed alterations may well require anyway. OCR,
> no matter how accurately carried out, will have a small error rate: in my
> experience 1% to 2%, which will require detailed proofreadng and
> correction.
>
> Some careful searching may reveal PDF to ODT conversion programs that
> preserve formatting, but the need for detailed proofreading and correction
> will still exist. On the occasions I OCR long texts, I always reformat.
>
> Rory
>
> > ________________________________
> > From: Terence Warby <twcw.chenh...@gmail.com>
> > Sent: December 15, 2023 10:38
> > To: users@openoffice.apache.org <users@openoffice.apache.org>
> > Subject: Re: PDF to odt problem
> >
> > I think the best thing to do is to run the pdf file through an OCR
> > program. This will recover the text and you can the edit this in
> > OpenOffice writer. Hope this helps. ________________________________
> > From: AOL Mail <radiogoodh...@aol.com.INVALID>
> > Sent: Friday, December 15, 2023 1:14:50 AM
> > To: users@openoffice.apache.org <users@openoffice.apache.org>
> > Subject: PDF to odt problem
> >
> > I am trying to change a PDF file to odt. I also take it to Best Buy and
> > when the techs converted it to odt and wanted to open it on Open Office
> > --- it was totally distorted. If I send you a PDF file can you convert
> > it for me to odt, please. It is a book my husband, who is an author,
> > wrote, and it needs some changes. My odt files disappeared, so the only
> > way out is converting a PDF to odt. I will really appreciate it very much
> > Yvonne Barkhuizen
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