How to use automator to convert pdf to word document?

I have been able to copy from pdf and paste to word. (I am told that does not work everytime, that it depends on the specifics of the .pdf.)

I found this on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEMlGoVNwGM

Apparently, it works for some people though it didn't work for me.

Kathy Dahlin wrote:

I found this on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEMlGoVNwGM

Apparently, it works for some people though it didn't work for me.

That's a pretty cool capability which appears to already manage much of what the one big new feature in MS Word 2013 will be. Thank you for providing the link.

Reading the comments, the issue with scanned documents is that what's in the pdf is a picture, like a jpeg, not actual text, and this technique doesn't do an OCR conversion; rather it extracts the text and formatting information. And while I don't use MS Office for Mac, I tried an rtf that I extracted using Automator in Office 2010 installed in a Windows 8 virtual machine and Windows recognized it as something Word could open, which Word than proceeded to do.

I also tried opening the original pdf in the Consumer Preview of Word 2013, and that did do a better job, retaining more of the formatting and the images, which rtf would and did ignore. But unless you can get it for free ("buy Office 2010 now, upgrade to Office 2013 for free"), the technique in the video does a remarkable job for the price.

Wasn't the original point of PDF's was to disallow copying, modification etc. etc. if I remember correctly?

For gen_: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4742968

gen_ wrote:

Wasn't the original point of PDF's was to disallow copying, modification etc. etc. if I remember correctly?

That was and is one of the options that could be enforced but Adobe was trying to establish a universal cross platform document format that could be viewed and printed with the same results no matter what OS you were using. It took a while but Adobe succeeded.

Preservation of original PDF content is a common vulnerability that pdf to word converters have, especially for retaining graphics. I think maybe it's a bit more difficult to deal with it. Personally I use this PDF to Word Converter.

It does well even in retaining hyperlinks and spreadsheet. It really helps to convert PDF to Word for editing.

And now that you want to make PDF ready for modifying, why not changing them to interactive form? It’s convenient for editing.

i searched in google, the software for mac to convert pdf to word is really hard to found, but there are many free online tools. i used one, it can convert pdf to word free, and easy to use.

As one of the applied (meaning done outside of a research lab) malware distribution vectors is Word documents downloaded from untrusted sources, you may get more than you bargained for using a free PDF to Word online conversion site.