PDF XChange Forum

I just wanted to save a pdf files as word document, but the result is not as wanted: all pages have colored boxes over the top, all spreadsheet like tables have black triangles over each field etc.
Now I am removing all "path" elements of the pdf document to get rid of this artefacts.
It would be cool to be able to find (or even select) all "path" elements (or "images", etc.) that would be useful for many things. Such an expert find could be limited for the actual page or a selected range also.

Should be possible via the Content pane, where you can select Text, Images or Shapes.

In case you have MS Word 2016, you can open PDF's directly via File > Open.

Oh, nice... anyhow it would be perfect, if the selection could be limited to certain pages.
BTW selecting (or searching) for images by different criterias (dimension, color depth) would be also interesting.

I also must confess that I am still using Winword 2000 (on Windows 8.1) - I bought a license for 2010 but got tangled up in the ribbons

Hello Puffolino,

Did you also try the contents pane? There you can see and select various objects from the base content of the pages of that PDF.
As for the export to Word - it might be that the file is OK, but the very old Word 2000 is having issues with opening it. Please try installing the 2010 you also have a license for, and check if that works out better for you!

Regards,
Stefan

Yes, the content functions are a good start, but there could be more functionality in an 'Advanced mode'... Will try the 2010 version as well (need to reinstall it before that), I've already tried to open the file with SoftMaker Office which works fine with docx for normal. But I will do more testing in the next days.

Hi Puffolino,
Looking forward to hearing how it works in 2010.
Keep us posted!

Meantime I did some testing, MS Word 2016 is best (but still interesting)...


Original PDF (PDF XChange Viewer): Converted by PDF XChange Editor, viewed by MS Word 2016: Converted by PDF XChange Editor, viewed by Softmaker Textmaker 2018:

Hello Puffolino,
Could I ask for this sample document so that we can test here (both the original, and the output files?).

The attached sample PDF (just some pages containing tables) seems to have the same effects as mentioned above (not verified with Word 2016 which I'll do as soon as I am in the office).

Thanks for your support - I know, everything is drifting away now from the topic direction

Hi Puffolino,
Thank you for the files, this is certainly not quite how it should be appearing after the conversion, so I'll be sharing this with the dev team to be worked on, As it is an ongoing issue, I cannot give a timeline, but know that improvements are on the way.
In regards to the textmaker 2018 issue, I cannot discern whether that is caused by how we create the file, or how it is rendered in their software. I might recommend reaching out to them with the file and see if there is anything they can do while we investigate further from our end.

Have a great day!

That rendering issue is fixed in build 327.0