My Solution: Microsoft Word + Scansoft’s PDF Converter
You can’t convert PDF documents to Microsoft Word for free. You have to
purchase software from someone to do it - that’s just the nature of this
beast.
There are lots of PDF-to-DOC converters on the market, and I tested several
of these programs:
1. ScanSoft PDF Converter @
http://www.scansoft.com
2. Solid Converter PDF @
http://www.solidpdf.com/
3. PDF Grabber @
http://www.pixelplanet.com
4. PDF2Word @
http://www.verypdf.com/pdf2word/
5. Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard and Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional @
http://www.adobe.com
After all my research and testing I chose ScanSoft's PDF converter. It did
the best job converting PDF files. No exception. It costs $50 making Adobe
Acrobat's $450 price tag laughable.
But here's the part I like the best: it integrates with Microsoft Word. So
what does that mean? It means you can use the Word Batch Conversion Wizard
(the best kept secret) to convert mounds of PDF documents to the native
Microsoft Word DOC format. Instead of getting RTF files with DOC extensions,
PDF Converter via the Batch Conversion Wizard (BCW) actually converts PDF
documents to "real" Microsoft Word documents.
The RTF issues proved to be a frustrating caveat. Before I discovered PDF
Converter, I was using Adobe Acrobat Professional to convert PDF documents to
“Word†documents. Afterwards, I had to clean up the mangled mess left by
Acrobat’s half-hearted job. Using BCW, I converted the RTF/DOC files to a
pure DOC format. It was ugly, laborious, and expensive.
Replacing these primitive steps with PDF Converter provided the best,
cheapest answer to the PDF-to-DOC mystery. Since everyone at my company has
Microsoft Office already installed, this solution beats all the other ideas
I’ve seen or read so far.
All of the converters tested (including PDF Filter) proved incapable of
converting PDFs straight to DOCs without the RTF detour. However, PDF
Converter circumvented this obstacle when launched via the BCW. This feature
is priceless (along with its good conversion accuracy). In fact, PDF Filter
frequently converts better than Adobe!