Converting PDF files into Word or other text-based documents without losing the original layout has become one of the biggest challenges for the document conversion industry. GIRDAC PDF to Word Converter has joined this challenge offering various conversion options that extract text, columns, tables, images, tables, and hyperlinks from any PDF file without ruining its original format and saving the results as a DOC, DOCX, or RTF file. Besides, it can turn your PDF documents into plain-text files (TXT and XML) or extract their images and save them as individual files in any of the most common image file formats.
One of the things that make PDF to text conversion so challenging is precisely the fact that PDF wasn’t designed to render text, but images that look like text. Even non-scanned PDFs are usually a source of trouble, especially when they include tables, charts, columns, and nearly anything of a graphical nature or any out-of-the-ordinary layout feature. Scanned PDFs are simply impossible to convert into text without OCR support. GIRDAC PDF to Word Converter lacks that OCR support, which automatically rules out any possible PDF-to-text conversion. The most you can do is extract their pages as what they really are – images, and save them as individual TIFF, JPEG, BMP, or PNG files, for instance.
The trial version is limited to converting the first three pages of whatever PDF file you select as source, maximum. This doesn’t give you much room for testing, especially if you want to find out how good the program is for complex layouts. Three pages, however, is usually enough to check the conversion speed, the customization level, and the overall appearance of the converted file. In all three aspects, GIRDAC PDF to Word Converter has its flaws. Conversion speed, even when converting two or three pages, has room for improvement. The higher the complexity of the PDF file, the slower the conversion process. You can choose to extract only the images as individual files, the text only as a plain TXT file, or to convert the PDF into a continuous, flowing, or formatted Word-based file. The total lack of customizable output settings, advanced or otherwise, makes the final appearance of the resulting output file an act of faith. Actually, the results left much to be desired in terms of formatting. Except for the text and image extraction tasks, which performed as satisfactorily as expected, none of the documents I tried managed to reproduce the original layout in any way. Three PDF pages became 15 Word pages, most graphical content had gone, and the resulting editable file was simply unusable.
GIRDAC PDF to Word Converter can be upgraded to Pro, which will give you OCR support and no limitations in the number of pages to convert.
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