Friday, March 12, 2010

Convert PDF to Word

I have been waiting to see something like this for a while. Yes, I know I can purchase software to do the job. This one is FREE.

Run the application in the cloud by going to http://www.pdftoword.com/ three steps:
  1. Browse your computer for the PDF you need to convert
  2. Choose the resulting format—Word or RTF
  3. Submit the email address you wish the results to be sent to  
Don’t expect instant response as the site places your conversion in the queue. When you get to the front of the line, it will be converted and sent to your email address. When I ran my trial, they were in the midst of a server upgrade and the conversion took a while to get back to me. It was worth it; the document was a perfect conversion of the PDF including pictures and links.

There is a 5 MB limit on the free on-line version, so if you have a larger file to do, split it into smaller pieces. To create a PDF I use PDFredirect and you can use it to print to PDF parts of an already PDF formatted document.

I have not tried it yet, but it is supposed to do Excel as well! Yes, you can pay for a version that will install on your machine and has more features.