The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. Please do not forward this article to others without the author’s permission.
Adobe's popular PDF file format is often used in genealogy work. Many of the CD-ROM disks of interest to genealogists have been published in PDF format, as has much of the information found on genealogy web sites.
The Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) has become the de facto standard for electronic documentation distribution. Once a file is created in PDF format, anyone can read your document across a broad range of hardware and software, and it will look exactly as you intended — with layout, fonts, color, links, and images intact. In short, it will look like a document published with a desktop publishing program. It will look the same on any operating system, including Windows, Macintosh, Chromebook, Linux, UNIX, and even handheld computers. Best of all, the required software to view your PDF document is completely free. As a result, everyone can read your document.
PDF files used to be considered to be "secure." That is, nobody could ever take your PDF document, import it into a word processor, and then use your data. However, that has now changed. In fact, you can now easily convert PDF files to Word .DOC files, .TXT files. or to other formats.
This conversion capability is new. As an illustration, here is an excerpt from an article I published 22 years ago in this newsletter that shows the state of the PDF format at that time. In the February 25, 2002, edition of this newsletter, I wrote:
“By setting security options in Acrobat, the author can give his or her PDF documents a certain level of copy protection. One of the options available within Adobe Acrobat program that creates PDF files will prevent users from copying text or images, effectively disabling the normal ‘copy-and-paste’ functions. Other options prevent users from printing the document or changing the features that the author has set. You can even set a password to prevent viewing by would-be users who do not have the password. To be sure, anyone who can view a document can always re-type the information by hand. However, PDF files make it very difficult to electronically extract bits and pieces of information from within a document.
“I should point out that this protection is not 100% guaranteed. In fact, sophisticated hackers have succeeded in ‘cracking’ Adobe PDF files and extracting the original information. However, a lot of software skills are needed to ‘crack’ a PDF file. Even owners of the Adobe software that creates PDF files cannot easily ‘crack’ a PDF file created by someone else. Only a handful of people have ever managed to open a PDF file, and one of those even spent a few days in jail for his activity. While not 100% safe, you can assume that, if you select the proper options, there is about a 99.99999% chance that a PDF document you create will never be ‘cracked’ by anyone else. Few people are willing to risk incarceration for extracting data from your genealogy PDF file!”
My, how the world has changed in the past 22 years! Today, there are a number of programs that will quickly and easily extract (or “crack”) data from a PDF file. Adobe has since given up all ideas of protecting their file format. Nobody is in danger of being incarcerated in 2024 for "cracking" a PDF file. (Of course, copyright laws still apply to any converted file.)
The first programs to appear for extracting data from PDF were difficult to use. One had to be a techie with a lot of knowledge of the underlying technology in order to use most of them. Even then, the data extracted often lost its formatting or looked a bit "weird" after being extracted. With most of these programs, the user still needed to do a lot of "clean up" work.
In the past few years, several new programs have appeared that are easy to use and require little technical knowledge. You can now easily convert PDF files to Word files or other formats with a simply point-and-click. Even better, it is no longer necessary to install software in your own computer. A number of cloud-based conversion services are available. In fact, I find the online conversion programs are so simple to use and produce such good results that I have stopped using file conversion software that needs to be installed in my computer.
The programs I use today are so easy to use that anyone who can use a word processor can now extract a PDF file. There is no need for deep technical knowledge. You do not need Adobe Acrobat or Reader to use this new program. In addition, unlike a few years ago, most of the text, formatting, and images are preserved in the newly-converted file. The converted file will look exactly or almost exactly the same as the original PDF file, except that you can then edit it and add to it as you wish. In short, using this program is almost as simple as falling off a log.
For anyone getting started, I would recommend using one of the several available online services to perform the conversion. With several to choose from, details will vary from one program to another. However, all of them do a credible job of converting PDF files to DOC format. Most all images will be preserved and text formatting usually is also preserved. However, the formatting often is not perfect after conversion. Some minor “clean up” effort may be required.
My favorite cloud-based file conversion service is called CloudConvert and is found at https://cloudconvert.com. CloudConvert will convert a lot more than PDF files. In fact, it will convert more than 200 different file formats into as many new file formats.
CloudConvert supports nearly any audio, video, document, ebook, archive, image, spreadsheet or presentation format. Best of all, there is no need to download and install any software. Simply open a web browser, go to https://cloudconvert.com and follow the menus to convert from one file format to another.
CloudConvert supports nearly any audio, video, document, ebook, archive, image, spreadsheet or presentation format. Do you have an old word processor file that was stored as a Microsoft Works Word Processor Document (a file format that was popular in home computers in the 1990s before Microsoft Word became popular for home use) and want to convert it to an HTML document for publishing in a web page? No problem! CloudConvert can do that for you and can do it free of charge!
CloudConvert is free of charge for personal use. I suspect the free version will meet the needs of most casual users. However, if you need to perform a lot of file conversions, you probably want to pay $9.00 U.S. for a more powerful solution. Pricing details may be found at https://cloudconvert.com/pricing.
Another service for converting PDF files to Word’s .DOC or .DOCX format is available from Adobe. Yes, the company that used to “lock” PDF files so they could not easily be converted to anything else is now a leader in converting PDF files into more useful formats!
The primary advantage of using Adobe Acrobat DC is that the software comes from the company that invented PDF. The result usually is exact or nearly exact reproduction of the original PDF file, converted to .DOC or .DOCX format. All your fonts and formatting come with it. That includes tables, bullet points, and everything else you want to keep updated.
There are two major disadvantages, however:
1. Adobe Acrobat DC only converts PDF to .DOC or to .DOCX formats, not to the 200+ formats supported by CloudConvert .
2. Adobe Acrobat DC is a paid, subscription-based program and an expensive one at that. It costs $12.99 US or $19.99 US, depending upon the version you select. However, you can obtain a 7-day free trial which should be sufficient for a short-term project.
You can learn more about Adobe Acrobat DC at https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/how-to/pdf-to-word-doc-converter.html.
Summary
You can find other PDF-to- DOC conversion programs but I would suggest you closely evaluate the two I have already described. For small batches of files, these two should more than meet the needs of most casual users. If you need to convert thousands of files, however, you might investigate the much more expensive programs that require installation in your Windows, Macintosh, Linux, or other computer.
