PDFZilla is a desktop application that quickly and accurately convert PDF files into editable Word Documents, RTF's, Text Files, Images, HTML Files, and Shockwave/Flash/SWF Files.
Therefore, PDFZilla supports most of popular formats: DOC, RTF, TXT, BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF, HTML, SWF formats.
PDFZilla has a batch convert mode and Page Selection.

One of the biggest problems with getting text from a PDF file to Word is that if you copy and paste the text manually from PDF to Word, you'll end up with paragraph returns at the end of every line in the PDF. This means that you will have paragraph returns in the middle of sentences in your Word file. You'll then have to manually delete those paragraph returns. Although this shortcoming isn't unique to PDFZilla, it's still undesirable. I found that PDFZilla didn't solve the problem--paragraph returns were still in the middle of lines of text.

Free alternative is AnyBizSoft PDF to Word Converter, which does the same thing as PDFZilla, but is free for personal use and is simpler to use.

Paul  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+86)

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PROS:
* Successful download, installation, activation, registration on Vista x32 OS.
* Simple, attractive, easy-to-understand, easy-to-navigate GUI.
* extensive Help File (including tech-support info.) located in program.
* Can select/convert single file or entire folder for conversion.
* Supports Drag & Drop of files onto conversion area of inside screen.
* user may designated location of output folder for conversions.
* user may select output conversion format from within inside screen or from main/outside screen.
* progress bar at bottom of inside screen allows user to monitor output conversion status.
* conversions are very quick - too quick to time specifically.

CONS:
* program window cannot be re-sized.
* quality of converted output is hit-or-miss (i.e., inconsistent. The resulting MSWord, RTF, Text, and HTML output documents were accurate for the most part, except for the number "5" was converted into the letter "s" - but this is editable, so it may be fixed during the post-conversion editing process. Also, the signature-field conversion yielded a bunch of unreadable "gobblety-gook." The "SWF"-converted output was completely inoperable - it did not work at all. Lastly, all image-converted outputs (gif, bmp, png, etc.) were all 100% accurate and flawless (even the signature field was 100% correct).

Summary - The program would be much better if the noted flaws were eliminated. But, despite these flaws, the program does serve a useful purpose of allowing the user to edit a PDF document, as needed (especially in the MSWord, Text, RTF, HTML modes.) The image-format output conversions are perfect, so all-in-all, the program does as it says (in the final analysis) - and I give the program an overall thumbs up. Thanks, GOTD and PDFZilla.

Freeware Options:

Free PDF to Word
PDFill PDF Editor
Some PDF

Inas  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+75)

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There are several types of PDF files. In simplistic terms a PDF is a container file format like Zip. A PDF file can contain image only, image and text, text only or neither.

How to know if your file contains any of the above:

-open a PDF file
-try to select some text
=-if you can't then it's a image based PDF file
=-if you can and the extracted text is legible then it's a text based PDF or a mixed based PDF file
=-if you can and the extracted text is illegible then is neither of the above

Strategies to convert PDF files into other types of files: doc; html; txt; rtf.

1 - Image based PDF files

Image based PDF files contain only images. To convert the contents to text and preserve the formating an app has to extract the images files, then has apply OCR [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition] on the extracted files. And then convert the result into "doc" files.

OCR cannot guarantee neither lossless conversion nor semi-lossless conversion.

-Lossless conversion
--the final document is an exact representation of the original, preserving both the complete text without errors and the original formating.

-Semi-lossless conversion
--the final document is an almost exact representation of the original, preserving the complete text without errors but ignoring the original formating.

OCR is difficult and not even the best OCR applications promise 100% fidelity.

PDFZilla fails with false advertising. Doesn't even support Unicode or accented characters. Doesn't preserve formating. So the PDFZilla guarantees data loss.

2 - Text based PDF files

Text based PDF files are the easiest to convert to other documents. Every PDF viewer is able to extract text without formating from these PDF files. And there are several utilities designed specially to do this and most of them are free.

The tricky part is preserving formating, ie, complete lossless conversion.

Does PDFZilla provides complete lossless conversion? Does it preserve the formating?

3 - Mixed PDF files

Mixed PDF files contain both text and image. They are very difficult to convert correctly.

A two pass strategy has to be employed. First: extract the text part. Second: extract the image part and convert to text preserving the formating. Third: combine the first two into a complete file.

Mixed PDF files contain parts that cannot be export to text correctly, like math formulae, or should not be exported to text at all, like graphics, charts, etc..

Since PDFZilla failed the 1st strategy it fails this one too.

4 - Neither (the garbled text extraction)

To convert this type of PDF files the converter has to apply a 3-pass strategy:

-convert the PDF file to image files
-convert the images into text using OCR
-convert the result into a new document

Since PDFZilla we already saw that it can't do OCR correctly it fails this one too.

So it's plain to see that PDFZilla is incapable of doing what's advertised:

PDFZilla is a desktop application that quickly and accurately convert PDF files into editable MS Word Documents, Rich Text Documents, Plain Text Files, Images, HTML Files, and Shockwave Flash SWF Files.

Jack  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+64)

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Paul, it's easy to remove unwanted paragraph returns in Word. Use search and replace. First, do a search and replace to convert all double paragraph return into a specific text like "*tempreturn*". Then do a search and replace to remove all paragraph returns - so you'll also remove triple paragraph returns or more. After that, do another search and replace to change back all *tempreturn* into single paragraph return.

Universal Cynic  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+57)

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anybiz has a 3 page limit, this doesn't.

Search and replace paragraph marks under "special" in word.

Anti anybiz  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+24)

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