Software to convert PDF to other formats

Foxit PhantomPDF - - it's not free but there's lots you can do with a PDF, including Save As ...
 
You don't mention a particular file format but turning that PDF into editable text is probably the desired outcome.

Acrobat CC can convert your PDF apparently, just not sure if this means the paid version only. Scroll to where it says "How to convert scanned PDFs to instantly editable text using automatic OCR software in Acrobat" for instructions.

A good alternative to this, no app install required, is to use Google Docs:

Convert an image file
  1. On your computer, go to drive.google.com.
  2. Right-click on the desired file.
  3. Click Open with
    nHFGZ_9xjCh-mP83zMzXQVJF5VYf2n6kwoBIxB2zv3V4VPT4gNTtBye8lYznogLqLPY=w13-h18
    Google Docs.
  4. The image file will be converted to a Google Doc, but some formatting might not transfer:
    • Bold, italics, font size, font type, and line breaks are most likely to be retained.
    • Lists, tables, columns, footnotes, and endnotes are likely not be detected.
 
A little off topic but I feel its worth mentioning, CutePDF is free and allows you to convert anything you can print to a PDF.
 
There are tons of free tools to do this... I prefer to convert to MS Word, which can actually be done via MS Word itself... or you can go online to something like http://pdf2docx.com/ and it can be done for you... If you Google "Convert PDF to 'desired format' ", you will probably get a bunch of other tools...
 
It depends on the format of the source PDF. I have 5 different PDF to Word convertors in my toolkit. Each one is a little different and does better on some formats than others.
 
I have a few books in PDF format that I'd like to convert to true eBooks but I've yet to find a clean way of doing this.
 
My findings...

Most Expensive and bloated: Adobe Pro
Best for the price (cheapest): PhantomPDF
Best Overall (I like it because it's fast and intuitive): PDF-XChange
 
These other suggestions are good, but if you want to try the big dog for anything .pdf-related, it's NitroPDF. It converts almost all formats and allows full editing. I've even done entire restaurant menus from scratch in Nitro, although Adobe stuff is much easier, but Nitro at least has a usable word processor built-in.

It will also install (optionally) plugins for all of MS-Office, so you have powerful conversion tools and batch tools without even opening Nitro itself. If you do a lot of .pdf and .docx work, Nitro is a very big time saver.
 
There are tons of free tools to do this... I prefer to convert to MS Word, which can actually be done via MS Word itself... or you can go online to something like http://pdf2docx.com/ and it can be done for you... If you Google "Convert PDF to 'desired format' ", you will probably get a bunch of other tools...
Doesn't convert images, just text. I ran a few PDFs with images and none of the images were copied to the DOC and DOCX formats. It did pick up the images in converting the PDF to a JPG (assume the same for PNG), but not worthwhile. It would be easier to copy the text from the PDF and use something like Snipping Tool to copy the images and reconstruct a DOC or DOCX file from the PDF.
There are a few other PDF to DOC free converters, but do a terrible job with images if copied at all. IMO, a good converter should give me a DOC(X) file that if I loaded it into LibreOffice Writer and then saved as a PDF, I'd get the same PDF file back (at least looks the same as the original).
 
These other suggestions are good, but if you want to try the big dog for anything .pdf-related, it's NitroPDF. It converts almost all formats and allows full editing. I've even done entire restaurant menus from scratch in Nitro, although Adobe stuff is much easier, but Nitro at least has a usable word processor built-in.

It will also install (optionally) plugins for all of MS-Office, so you have powerful conversion tools and batch tools without even opening Nitro itself. If you do a lot of .pdf and .docx work, Nitro is a very big time saver.
I just downloaded the free version and it won't convert images and text. It says you need to buy the Pro version to convert both to a usable DOC(X) file.
 
Back