long, complex pages file will not convert to word

Can you export to .rtf?

denise.stephenson wrote:

I can convert to pdf, but then when I try to convert from that to word

What are you using to do that?

Do you know for sure that conversion to .doc will preserve more formatting than conversion to .rtf does?

I just downloaded an app from the mac app store called "pdf to word with ocr" it is/was on sale for $9.99 (regular $48.00). Maybe you can try a free converter to see if you can convert the pdf file to a word doc. The conversion from pdf to word may still require you to go through the word document and reformat some of the document, but at least the file will be a .doc.

It is just a novel manuscript. How could an .rtf not contain enough formatting?

Why would a novel require multiple columns and why would an editor really need anything beyond the basic formatted text to work from?

A real publisher will not want your formatting, that is something that will be handled by a professional layout artist/typographer.

Peter

victoryhat

That is such a bad idea.

PDFs already contain the text, it is just a matter of extracting it and putting it in a format that Word handles. Acrobat Pro does this.

OCR is purely for scanned material and inaccurate, requiring post editing all over again.

Peter

denise.stephenson wrote:

Tom, it did convert to rtf, but it leaves a lot of formatting to redo,

Again, what did you use to try to convert pdf to word? The online service offered by Adobe Reader, or what?

You are interested in a way out of your difficulties?

Have you actually tried exporting to rtf?

RTFs exported may not include Section Breaks, Footnotes, or multiple columns, but they retain just about everything else. All the typography including fonts, sizes, leading, indents, even URLs and hyperlinks.

What exactly are you missing?

The breaks can easily be marked with tags, and reinstated with a quick search and replace.

The point is we can't see what you have or why you are having the difficulties but obviously you are. If what you are doing isn't working then you have to try something else.

Unless you are self publishing, no serious publisher wants authors typesetting the document. The designer, whose job it will be to put the volume into printable form, will as their first step usually strip off most of the formatting, which is rarely usable.

Authors like to think their efforts at doing the designer's job are actually helpful, 99% of the time they are not, just nobody likes to tell them.

Did you ask what the exact requirements were for the submitted work?

If so why did you do it in Pages, only to submit it as a Word document?

Peter

OCR is in the name of the app. The name of the app is "pdf to word with ocr" Anyway, I have used the OCR in the app, and it works fine; minimal reformatting on a complex layout.

Denise

I don't believe I expressed any attitude.

I can not see why you would have gone via pdf.

I would appreciate a link to your publisher's submission requirements.

I hardly have had contact with every publisher out there, but every single one I have seen their requirements are absolutely basic for manuscripts and don't vary much from the Standard Manuscript Format. You could submit them as .txt files.

As a designer I just wish that authors actually stuck to the publishers' formatting requirements, I always describe it as someone trying to knit a sweater for the first time, then passing it to us to finish. We spend most of our time undoing their work.

Peter

I have a relative who is an author, the editor and publisher INSIST <------------ read it again peter INSIST that a copy of the work be supplied to them in a Microsoft Office Word document.