Sometimes it's really annoying to reedit a PDF file, and would like to have a final killer app to do the job. Adobe Program is a little heavy and expensive. Noticed some PDF converter programs around, so how much this kind of program would help excactly?

There was a thread about this a while back that had some decent suggestions. I find that as long as the PDF doesn't have a lot of formatting and graphics, uploading to Google Docs does a decent job of the conversion to text.

I picked up version 1.0 of AnyBizSoft's PDF to Word converter in a bundle or something awhile back.

It will do the conversion, but horribly. The Word document that you're left with has extremely odd formatting / margins / sections / text boxes in an effort to deliver output identical to the original's layout. There are newer versions that may do a better job of it.

Sometimes I cheat. I just pull the PDF file into Pages, set it as a background image, and use text boxes to fill in the PDF and/or edit (small) sections. This doesn't work so well if you have flowing text or larger bits of text to change, but it's great for those stupid PDFs that aren't form-fillable (or at least, aren't form-fillable on a Mac for whatever damn reason). Then output to PDF again and nobody's the wiser...

Sometimes I cheat. I just pull the PDF file into Pages, set it as a background image, and use text boxes to fill in the PDF and/or edit (small) sections. This doesn't work so well if you have flowing text or larger bits of text to change, but it's great for those stupid PDFs that aren't form-fillable (or at least, aren't form-fillable on a Mac for whatever damn reason). Then output to PDF again and nobody's the wiser...
Wow, that's cool. Will have a try. XD

Also searched on the Mac App Store, and got a tons of this kind apps. Dazzled of how to pick up a reliable one. Noticed an app named exactly the "PDF To Word (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/seasky-pdf-to-word/id436103909?mt=12)". Sounds it would do a decent job. Any good experience?

FileJuicer (http://echoone.com/filejuicer/) can extract text in a PDF file to a txt file and Microsoft Word .doc file. Seems to be decent. I use it primarily to extract images in a PDF file.

I've heard good things about PDFpen from Smile.

emm, extract text and image from PDF files? Any difference to convert a PDF file in the whole?

Any difference to convert a PDF file in the whole?

File Juicer lifts the text off a PDF and knows fairly well where a paragraph ends. Images are extracted separately and stored in a different folder.

Let's say if you have a PDF file with a column of text on the left half of the page and a bunch of images on the right half of the page, File Juicer won't be able to reproduce the layout in a Word document after it does the extraction.

EDIT: A further clarification of what "extract" means. Suppose there is an image of Toronto embedded in the PDF. The original dimension of the image is 3000x2000 pixels. File Juicer extracts the image and saves it in a subfolder Images. In there you would find the full resolution 3000x2000 pixels image of Toronto.

Yes, that also works. But it would be truly amazing if an app can convert the text and image together.

it would be truly amazing if an app can convert the text and image together.

I just tried converting a page in a PDF file with both text and images in the full Acrobat. Note this is not the Acrobat Reader but the full app.

Acrobat can somewhat convert the page to Microsoft Word, keeping the images at the correct section in the page. The paragraphs remain more or less intact, but the placement of some paragraphs are off.

If I have to edit the converted page in Word, I would still need to rearrange the paragraphs and fix the text that doesn't get converted properly. You pretty much have to read every word to see if there is incorrect conversion.

I just tried converting a page in a PDF file with both text and images in the full Acrobat. Note this is not the Acrobat Reader but the full app.

Acrobat can somewhat convert the page to Microsoft Word, keeping the images at the correct section in the page. The paragraphs remain more or less intact, but the placement of some paragraphs are off.

If I have to edit the converted page in Word, I would still need to rearrange the paragraphs and fix the text that doesn't get converted properly. You pretty much have to read every word to see if there is incorrect conversion.

Yeah, that would be more annoying. Have tried it once, but I wasn't patient to check the converted files carefully when I noticed it's not what I want. That's why I'm looking for an app can do a completely conversion job.