How to Convert Image PDF
You have probably experienced it before. After a long search, you finally find a PDF file with the content you are looking for, open it in Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, and start to click your way through the conversion process, only to find that it cannot be converted. What went wrong?
Chances are the file is scanned. Depending on the type of PDF you have, either a native or a scanned PDF, the conversion process will differ.
Scanned material does not have the underlying data structure commonly found in electronically generated content, such as a document created in MS Word 2007. Converting a scanned PDF, also known as an Image PDF, thus, requires one extra step when converting.
To get your image PDF file converted, you need to run the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine on the file which will transform your scanned document into an electronic character-based file which can then be converted as usual.
To transform a scanned image PDF file to an electronic character-based file:
Open the scanned PDF you wish to convert in Acrobat 9 Pro.
Choose OCR Text Recognition from the Document menu. In the next menu, select Recognize Text Using OCR.
Choose your page range settings in the Recognize Text dialogue box. Click on Edit for more advanced options before you start the OCR process. Click OK in both dialogue boxes once your settings are adjusted.
Once the OCR engine is done going over the file, you can then convert it to a Word document.
The simplest way is to select Export from the File menu, and choose Word Document.
Complete your conversion by saving your file.
