Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

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sparkuser
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Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by sparkuser »

I am running v7.9 (build 328.2) of XChange Editor on Windows 10 Pro.

I received a long specifications document as a PDF from an external organization, and converted it to Word for translation.
(The original document looks to have been created in Word using nested tables, and was then converted to PDF for distribution.) When I convert to Word from the PDF, 6000+ of the table fields are rendered as textboxes rather than body text within the table, which makes the formatting completely unusable. (It's also causing my version of Word (2016) to stall and sometimes crash.)

The text boxes look to align with the text blocks in the PDF version.

My question is: is there a way to convert to Word without causing this to happen? -- ie. to force PDF-XChange Editor to export all text as body text rather than textboxes?

I've tried a couple of things, without any effect:
- unticking "edit text as blocks"
- exporting to Word rather than converting to Word from the ribbon (although those may be identical processes)

Thank you.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, sparkuser

You may find better results if you flatten these form fields before conversion. This should convert them all into base content, which I believe will ensure that they are body text. To do this, look to the Comment tab while the PDF document is open, on the far right there will be a "flatten comments" function, use this.

Ensure that "Form fields" are set to Flatten, and then click OK.

After that, try converting the flattened version of the file to Word. Note that you should save this version of the document as a separate file from the original, as once flattened it is not possible to recover the Form fields that were originally present.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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sparkuser
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by sparkuser »

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for your instructions. Unfortunately, I'm still getting the same effect. Are there any other settings I might try?

I'll upload a couple of screenshots so you can see.
text blocks in PDF.jpg
word textbox after PDF convert.jpg
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, sparkuser

In that case, my first suggestion will be to update our software to the latest version (8.0.339.0) and see f it works better there. If not, please send us a copy of the files you are working with so we can test this and investigate.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
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sparkuser
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by sparkuser »

Thank you again for your reply, Daniel. I have now updated to 8.0.337.0 and have converted to Word, both with and without flattening the form fields, but I'm still getting the same issue.

By the way, when I checked for updates from within PDF-XChange Editor, it indicated that there were no updates available. I downloaded a clean install from the standard downloads page, but I thought I should mention that the earlier version didn't recognize any available updates.

I'll be glad to provide the documents. They are sensitive in nature -- is there a secure way of sharing them with you rather than uploading on this thread?

Thank you.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, sparkuser

Usually if the updater is not offering any updates, it means that windows or your firewall is preventing our updater from checking, or that you have disabled the option to "download updates incompatible with my maintenance plan" in the updater. In any of those cases, the simplest way to update is to manually download and run the latest installer, so all should be fine on that front.

As for sending the documents you can email them directly to us via <support@pdf-xchange.com>. Please include a link to this post so that we can associate the two quickly.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
sparkuser
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by sparkuser »

Thank you, Daniel. I will submit them as you instruct.

Many thanks.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, sparkuser

Thank you for the documents here. I have reproduced the issue here and am afraid that there are no solutions currently available to improve this. I have created a report for our development team regarding this, to offer some functionality to create proper tables when converting to word, which should help with the formatting here. In the meantime, I must apologize for the continued inconvenience. You can find the ticket number below:

RT#5238: Conversion to word uses "textboxes" in stead of "tables"

While you cannot look this up directly yourself, you can ask any member of our support team for an update on its progress in the future.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
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LKW-RPP
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by LKW-RPP »

Unfortunately, I am having this exact same issue and this is something that I do fairly regularly. I can subscribe to an Adobe add-on to allow this (we used Adobe in the past), but I absolutely hate using Adobe products with all of the overhead and background processes they bring along. Any idea when this might be addressed in PDF-XChange? Not only does text appear in boxes, but every corner of every field has blank text boxes as well.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Word conversion renders text in textboxes instead of body text

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, LKW-RPP

I am afraid that this will be a highly complex feature, and thus will take much time to develop. I cannot offer a timeline for it because of this, but I can say that it will not be available before the release of version 9.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
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