How to convert a PDF file to Word, Excel or JPG format

Posted on September 10, 2007 at 4:12 pm

Make sure to read other posts from the Convert File Formats series!

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One common question I’ve run across a lot these days in the office is how to convert a PDF file to Microsoft Word format (doc), Excel format (xls), or JPG picture format. Usually, people want to know how to convert a file to PDF, but it’s also nice to be able to convert back the other way. Converting to Word is actually pretty simple and can be done directly using an online file conversion service called Zamzar. Going to Excel or JPG is a two step process, but nothing very difficult to follow.

Update: There’s a much easier way to convert a PDF to JPG image format than the method I have mentioned below. Here’s how you can do it using Zamzar.com.

Convert a PDF file to JPG - Easy Way

Go to ZamZar.com, browse for your file and choose PNG format for the format to conver to under Step 2. PNG is another newer picture format that is slowly replacing the JPG format. Most programs that can open JPG files can open PNG. Zamzar automatically converts each page in the PDF document into it’s own PNG picture file. Now you can simply open Microsoft Paint (yes, all you need it Paint!) and choose File - Save As from the menu and choose JPEG from the drop down list of formats.

That’s it! By the way, if youare interested in how to extract the text from a PDF document or how to convert Word files to PDF, etc, check out the links.

Convert PDF to JPG Format - Second Way

The first thing you’ll need to do is download a free software (the only one I could find) that converts PDF documents to JPEG image format automatically. Go to the Omniformat download page and download both Omniformat v8.3 and the PDF995 app. You will need to download and install PDF995 first before installing Omniformat. Once you have both programs installed, go to your Start Menu programs, find the program group Software995 and click on Omniformat.

The only annoying thing about this program is that it requires you to view some ads for about 30 seconds! However, it’s better than paying $20 or $40 for a program just to do a simple conversion! It does pop up another instance of your browser window for the web site of each of the sponsors, but it does not install any spyware onto your computer (no popup ads). Once the program is loaded, you’ll see it has a section called “Watch Folders” and then a button at the bottom titled “Start Monitoring” and “Single Pass“.

Basically the way it works is that you need to COPY the PDF files you want to convert to JPG format to the C:\omniformat\watch folder and then press Single Pass. The program will look in that directory and convert each page of each PDF into a separate JPG file. If you click Start Monitoring, you can keep dropping PDFs into that folder and the program will automatically convert them into JPGs as long as the program is open. Note that the program DELETES the original PDF document that it uses, so that’s why you need to COPY the PDF document to the watch folder, not move it! You should now see your converted files like below:

Convert your PDF to a Word document

Go to Zamzar.com and click the Browse button next to Step 1 and choose your file. By default, Step 2 will be set to DOC format, but you can choose to convert your PDF to other file types such as TXT, HMTL, RTF, etc. Type in your email address for Step 3 and click Convert.

You should receive an email within a few minutes with a download link to your converted file. I have tried out this service on some pretty complex PDF documents with text in multiple columns, multiple images, etc and have been very impressed with it’s conversion accuracy.

Convert a PDF file to Excel format

We will again follow the steps above using Zamzar, but this time choose TXT as the format you want to convert to. Unfortunately, you can’t convert straight to Excel format, so we’ll have to go through the intermediary TXT format. Once you have downloaded the TXT file and saved it on your computer, open Microsoft Excel and go to File - Open and change the Files of Type combo box to All Files.

Now you should see the converted text file in the list of files. Choose it and click Open. You’ll now be brought to the Text Import Wizard. You have to open the file in this manner because if you simply right-click and say Open With Excel, all of the text for each row will appear in the first column and not be separated.

For Step 1, choose Delimited from the two options listed.

Click Next and check off the Space checkbox as one of the delimiters. Each value should now be separated by a vertical line, indicating it’s going to be in a separate column.

convert pdf to jpg

Click Next and then click Finish. You can now save the file as an Excel file by going to File - Save As. There are a few drawbacks, however, as this conversion does not always work perfectly! For example, if the original Excel sheet had a column where there was text with spaces included, each word will be separated into it’s own column! Also, you won’t see any formulas or functions that may have been in the original Excel sheet, only the text.

It’s as easy as that! You can use many other image editing programs also such as Photoshop, Corel, etc, etc, but I chose Paint because that is universally available on just about every Windows computer.

Any questions, post a comment!

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25 Responses to “How to convert a PDF file to Word, Excel or JPG format”

Shukla said on : November 15th, 2007 at 10:19 pm

Tried to convert .pdf to word

Not one word was converted all the pages appeared blank and the images were also blocked out

geo said on : December 1st, 2007 at 5:37 am

thanks you very much

Michelle said on : December 19th, 2007 at 11:24 am

Tried to convert .pdf to word using zamzar.com.

All the pages appeared blank and the images were also blocked out.

Still looking for a way to convert pdf to word so that file may be edited - for free.

Bill said on : January 11th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

Successfully converted 3 pdf files to txt for conversion to excel.

Joanna said on : January 16th, 2008 at 6:32 am

But you didn’t mention the steps of converting PDF to word?

sanjiv said on : January 21st, 2008 at 2:15 am

Its awesome , I saved almost two days i thought I have to typed a PDF file but this is so simple one click and its done thanks

akishore said on : January 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 am

Bill & Sanjiv - I’m glad it worked for you guys!

Shukla, Michelle - Not sure why it’s blacking out the documents. Maybe there is some security on those PDFs, that would be why. Converting from PDF to Word has worked for me several times.

Stelios said on : January 23rd, 2008 at 5:13 am

Thanks,

saeba said on : January 27th, 2008 at 1:37 am

this link looks good.. please try
http://www.freepdfconvert.com/.....source.asp

rajendran said on : January 27th, 2008 at 11:35 am

thank you….it s very help full 2 all…im sure tis site s very very superb…once again thanx.

Phyllis said on : February 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 am

That worked just fine for me. Thanks.

Gururaj said on : March 2nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm

Zamzar does not seem to work in converting PDF files in double-byte languages (such as Japanese) to Word files. However, the link posted in 9. by Saeba converted the Japanese text in the PDF file to Unicode text; however, there’s a 2-page limitation unless you become a member. Interested in other online services that convert PDF to Word. Nice tips. Keep up the good work!

uma said on : April 1st, 2008 at 4:38 am

Conversion of jpeg files into excel format

SAGAR SEN said on : April 16th, 2008 at 1:32 am

wWANT TO CONVERT A JPEG FILE TO WORD FILE

indranil said on : April 16th, 2008 at 3:59 am

Great job man!!
Thanks a lot !!

MOHIT KR.BHARDWAJ said on : April 24th, 2008 at 5:48 am

how to convert the pdf file into xls work sheet.

sutat said on : May 2nd, 2008 at 7:12 pm

thank you thank you

Neeti said on : May 3rd, 2008 at 3:41 pm

Hi,
I have a pdf file which has both images and text, both are nor formatted. Is there any way to convert the text to excel and images to jpg format? i have tried so many free softwares, but nothing is working?

Colin said on : May 6th, 2008 at 8:36 am

it’s cute.
very useful to me.
will try to use soon, looking forward for good profermance

PDF to BMP to JPG said on : May 6th, 2008 at 11:27 am

Another way to convert from PDF to JPG is to use “FillOutAForm” from http://jdmcox.com/ to convert from PDF to BMP then use Microsoft Paint to convert from BMP to JPG.

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