79
2
Adobe Acrobat (ver. 9/X/XI)
•
File > Export; File > Save As (Word, Excel, html, xml, etc.); File > Save As Other
(Word, Excel, html, xml, etc.)
•
Right click menu options:
o Acrobat ver. 9: Copy, Copy As Table, Save As Table, Open Table in
Spreadsheet
o Acrobat ver. X/XI: Copy, Copy With Formatting, Export Selection As
•
Tables can be tricky to convert with any of the above methods
•
Conversion settings: Edit > Preferences > Convert From PDF > [select file type]
> Edit Settings... [see Figures 1 and 2]
•
More info (Adobe online Help): http://tinyurl.com/r9jn9y
(ver. 9),
http://tinyurl.com/convverx
(ver. X), http://tinyurl.com/convverXI
(ver. XI)
•
Includes an OCR function that allows converting image-based PDF files into
searchable images (see above “Searchable image PDF files”)
o Acrobat ver. 9: Document > OCR Text Recognition
o Acrobat ver. X/XI: Tools > Text Recognition
•
Text can be selected and copied from text-based PDF files and searchable
image files (but not from normal image-based PDF files without converting them
to searchable images first)
•
Image-based files can be saved directly as text-based Word/Excel files in
Acrobat X/XI (File > Save As; File > Save As Other)
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Tools for PDF Conversion
•
ABBYY FineReader (www.abbyy.com
)
•
PDF Transformer (by ABBYY)
•
OmniPage (www.nuance.com/imaging/products/omnipage.asp
)
•
PDF Converter (by Nuance)
•
PDF to Excel: www.pdftoexcelonline.com
(free online tool)
o Not a perfect tool but free
o Remember document confidentiality when using online tools
Using ABBYY PDF Transformer
•
Simple – just a few clicks [see Figure 3]
•
PDF conversion and PDF creation
•
Can convert both text-based and image-based PDF files
•
Advanced Options for Word files: Original layout, Text flow, Keep pictures
•
Advanced Options for Excel files: Ignore text outside tables, Convert numeric
values to numbers
•
Recommended fonts for Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and Thai
Using ABBYY FineReader
•
Full-range OCR program for scanning, PDF/image file conversion and PDF
creation [see Figure 4]
•
Can convert both text-based and image-based PDF files; includes several
features/settings that can help improve conversion results when converting
image-based files
•
Open an image file (PDF, TIF, etc.) or scan a document
•
Read file using the OCR tool
•
Image can be edited (Edit Image button)
ATA-TCD Conference – January 26, 2013
ver. 1/2/2013