Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a PDF yet?

Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?

Or do I have to still find or buy a PDF to Word converter like in the olden
days?

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 04:58:02 +0000 (UTC), Chaya Eve
wrote:

Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?

Or do I have to still find or buy a PDF to Word converter like in the olden
days?

Ask Mr Google "how to edit pdf files free"

Chaya Eve wrote:
Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?

Or do I have to still find or buy a PDF to Word converter like in the olden
days?

LibreOffice Draw is an example. It will at least give you
a feeling for the technical issues involved.

*******

Try and edit this.

http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.pdf

Or flip to page 6 (or any other actual schematic page)
and edit the text. What do you notice ? This is a schematic
of a motherboard, prepared in a Mentor Graphics tool flow.

(9MB)
https://web.archive.org/web/20030803...s/25281202.pdf

The moral of the story is, you can draw things in Postscript
or PDF, which editing tools cannot do a good job of handling
for you. Editors must recognize "patterns" to add expressive
power to the editing tools. Editors come in "classes", with the
worst editors only able to change text in horizontal or
vertical strings. Some editors don't even recognize a set of
"loose characters" on a common baseline, as "words". This is
how I sort the various editors into their respective "bins",
by noting the things they don't do well.

Adobe Illustrator is pretty good at editing graphics of this
type. It understands text sitting on spline curves (because
the language supports that), and you can adjust the control
points on the spline curve. I don't really think it gets much
better than Illustrator.

Corel Draw claimed to be able to edit stuff like this,
but I managed to crash it on the very first test drawing.
And it wasn't even the two sample documents above :-) I
had a drawing from work, which was too much for it, and it
crashed. This was a "known issue", so Corel used their standard
approach. "I'll be fixed in the next program release - do you
have another $800 to spend on our next product ?". To which
I can answer an emphatic "No!!!".

*******

Also, Adobe bought a company (Jetform) and added their stuff (XFA)
to the PDF workflow. Even though that stuff isn't a standard
as such. There will be very few alternatives, short of buying
an Adobe product, for dealing with that stuff. For example, Linux
has some tools for working with PDF, but nothing touches XFA.

Paul

"Chaya Eve" wrote in message
news
Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?

Or do I have to still find or buy a PDF to Word converter like in the
olden
days?

I found this method online, and it works quite well:

1. Upload pdf in google drive.
2. Right click the pdf in google drive & open with google docs.(This will
create another copy of the pdf in google-doc format)
3. Edit the file in google docs & then download as pdf.

Of course, this assumes you have Google Drive :-)
--

SC Tom

On 7/6/2017 2:33 AM, Paul wrote:
Chaya Eve wrote:
Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?

Or do I have to still find or buy a PDF to Word converter like in the
olden
days?

LibreOffice Draw is an example. It will at least give you
a feeling for the technical issues involved.

*******

Try and edit this.

http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.pdf

Or flip to page 6 (or any other actual schematic page)
and edit the text. What do you notice ? This is a schematic
of a motherboard, prepared in a Mentor Graphics tool flow.

(9MB)
https://web.archive.org/web/20030803...s/25281202.pdf


The moral of the story is, you can draw things in Postscript
or PDF, which editing tools cannot do a good job of handling
for you. Editors must recognize "patterns" to add expressive
power to the editing tools. Editors come in "classes", with the
worst editors only able to change text in horizontal or
vertical strings. Some editors don't even recognize a set of
"loose characters" on a common baseline, as "words". This is
how I sort the various editors into their respective "bins",
by noting the things they don't do well.

Adobe Illustrator is pretty good at editing graphics of this
type. It understands text sitting on spline curves (because
the language supports that), and you can adjust the control
points on the spline curve. I don't really think it gets much
better than Illustrator.

Corel Draw claimed to be able to edit stuff like this,
but I managed to crash it on the very first test drawing.
And it wasn't even the two sample documents above :-) I
had a drawing from work, which was too much for it, and it
crashed. This was a "known issue", so Corel used their standard
approach. "I'll be fixed in the next program release - do you
have another $800 to spend on our next product ?". To which
I can answer an emphatic "No!!!".

*******

Also, Adobe bought a company (Jetform) and added their stuff (XFA)
to the PDF workflow. Even though that stuff isn't a standard
as such. There will be very few alternatives, short of buying
an Adobe product, for dealing with that stuff. For example, Linux
has some tools for working with PDF, but nothing touches XFA.

Paul
I don't use the editor but Sourceforge PDFCreator can be installed with
and editor: http://www.pdfforge.org/


I use PDFCreator but don't like the integration with PDF Architect, so I
have stayed with version 1.7.3

--
2017: The year we lean to play the great game of Euchre

"Chaya Eve" wrote

| Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?
|

I use the free version of PDF XChange Viewer to edit and
Libre Office to create. The former has limitations. Some
of those you can get around. For instance, you can notate
and fill out forms, but you can't just edit anything you like,
and you can't create a new PDF (?). But you can do things
like paste an image of the page you want into an existing
PDF page.

On 7/6/2017 12:58 AM, Chaya Eve wrote:
Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?

Or do I have to still find or buy a PDF to Word converter like in the olden
days?


I doubt that any version of an OS is going to do that. A "standard PDF"
is a document intended for output, and even the best tools from Adobe
can only go so far with "editing" them. So, converting them into an
editable format such as Word is the most practical way to achieve what
you want.

--
best regards,

Neil

On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 15:43:37 +1000, Monty wrote:

Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?

Or do I have to still find or buy a PDF to Word converter like in the olden
days?

Ask Mr Google "how to edit pdf files free"

Googling works for some things but does not work for others where this
turned out to be one of those things that Google fails for.

There are three types of things you can google (IMHO).
1. Things that have a known good very small set of working answers.
2. Things that have no good answer even though everyone has tried.
3. Things that have a billion answers, where the best is hidden.

This question likely fits into the third category, where every PDF is
different (text versus images versus field-editable) and at the same time,
every company out there wants to steer you toward their registration site,
their pay site, their pay product and their bad advice. Only an expert
would have solved this type of question (e.g., using Gimp or whatever, to
do the job).

This question might even fit, realistically, into the second category,
where Microsoft may have likely avoided PDF editing to keep Adobe happy.

It's certainly not in the first category, where if you Google what you
suggest, you'll find web sites that purport to do the conversion (all with
a catch) and even directions how to edit PDF in Microsoft Word which didn't
work for me when I tried.

A lot has to do with the fact that (a) everyone wants it, but (b) it
doesn't really exist (not for free anyway) without a catch.

I suspect Microsoft disallows PDF editing in Word because they don't want
to compete directly with Adobe on that for whatever reasons they do that.
Otherwise it would have been trivial for MS Word to edit a common PDF file
as text.

I'll try the Gimp next.

"Chaya Eve" wrote

| I suspect Microsoft disallows PDF editing in Word because they don't want
| to compete directly with Adobe on that for whatever reasons they do that.
| Otherwise it would have been trivial for MS Word to edit a common PDF file
| as text.

MS may very well be doing a favor for Adobe.
But at the same time, editing a PDF is not trivial.
If it were there's be lots of free versions. I looked
into writing such a program once myself. The
protocol is stunningly complex, It has to be to
accomodate the flexibility of the format. Also,
Adobe designed PDFs with file restriction flags,
to make a PDF seem relatively immutable. That's
what's made it so popular among business people.
A text file is just data. A PDF with a business logo
embedded and file restrictions in place rises to the
status of "official office document".

Interestingly, virtually everyone who
has written even a PDF viewer has chosen to
respect Adobe's file restriction flags, even though
it's not necessary. (I've recompiled Sumatra myself
to ignore them.) Adobe made the format
public but they still seem to run the show.

On 06/07/2017 05:58, Chaya Eve wrote:
Does Windows 10 have a way to edit a standard PDF yet?

Or do I have to still find or buy a PDF to Word converter like in the olden
days?
PDF to Word converter is available in Word 2016. Alternatively, get
Adobe Acrobat DC. See this wonderful picture in full colour!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://i.imgur.com/4lFAKsP.png http://i.imgur.com/4lFAKsP.png

--
With over 500 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

On 06/07/2017 15:29, Chaya Eve wrote:
Googling works for some things but does not work for others where this
turned out to be one of those things that Google fails for.


Then you need to spend some time to learn how to search the web effectively.

Windows 10 has Print to Microsoft PDF but you can't edit unless you have
dedicated software for that purpose. Your source can be edited before
creating a pdf file but as you are not computer savvy, you better stay
away from computers and let others handle difficult stuff.
.................................................. .....



--
With over 500 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

On 06/07/2017 15:29, Chaya Eve wrote:
I suspect Microsoft disallows PDF editing in Word because they don't
want to compete directly with Adobe on that for whatever reasons they
do that. Otherwise it would have been trivial for MS Word to edit a
common PDF file as text.

You are not using latest version of Word so you are not qualified to
make a such comments here on public newsgroups.

Microsoft had its own priorities and there was no point in doing
something if it is not going to generate any additional revenues. Adobe
was controlling the market but now in 2017, the paradigm has shifted and
Microsoft is going for almost anything including the Open Source
market. It is just a matter of time before we see Microsoft Linux.






--
With over 500 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 17:08:37 +0100, Good Guy
wrote:

You are not using latest version of Word so you are not qualified to
make a such comments here on public newsgroups.

Microsoft had its own priorities and there was no point in doing
something if it is not going to generate any additional revenues. Adobe
was controlling the market but now in 2017, the paradigm has shifted and
Microsoft is going for almost anything including the Open Source
market. It is just a matter of time before we see Microsoft Linux.

I suspect Microsoft and Adobe have come to an "agreement" on drawing the
line between just saving or printing PDF to editing PDF.

I had a Recosoft PDF-to-Office conversion program when I worked in business
about five years ago which worked most of the time on mostly text PDFs
where the images just came across as images but where the text was what I
needed converted to editable format.

I also had Adobe Acrobat (not the reader) which also had rudimentary PDF
editing.

I suspect it's not in Adobe's interest to allow robust PDF editing other
than the editing they habitually allow in "forms" (which is not the kind of
editing I'm talking about).

The kind of editing I want (and almost everyone wants who deals with such
things) is what Recosoft provided, but I don't have that software anymore.

It simply did the best it could to convert the PDF to Microsoft RTF or
FrameMaker MIF or Powerpoint, and then I was able to take it from there in
Microsoft Office.

I just wonder, since my Microsoft Office is 2007 (obviously dated), whether
the newer Microsoft Office edits PDF reasonably well or if it's still
garbage in garbage out as this document implies.
http://www.itworld.com/article/27052...word-2013.html

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 17:01:57 +0100, Good Guy
wrote:

Then you need to spend some time to learn how to search the web effectively.

I don't think you've actually tried to do what you said.

It's like looking for screenshot programs, or dvd burner software on the
web using Google (which always ends up being almost a total waste of time).

For example, it would almost be a miracle if a noob found ImgBurn in the
first twenty passes because so many other far more highly marketed dvd
burner pretenders to the thrown (e.g., Nero garbage for one) would pop up
first.

Same with batch screen shotting programs. There are so very many pretenders
to the throne that it would take you a long time before you found the
secret was simply Irfanview screen capture settings.

What I find happens in lots of searches is you get two types of time
wasting garbage "help" sites.
1. Indians who make believe they're giving technical advice, and,
2. Overly glitzy overly marketed resellers of crapware.

Since I'm very familiar with PDF issues (at least a decade of converting
the stuff but I have been out of it for about five years) I was just hoping
that things might have improved.

Based on the answers so far, nothing has improved from what it was five
years ago. I was hoping that Windows would natively support a PDF editor or
conversion to Word like this promises.
https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407353,00.asp

My MsOffice is 2007.

Windows 10 has Print to Microsoft PDF but you can't edit unless you have
dedicated software for that purpose. Your source can be edited before
creating a pdf file but as you are not computer savvy, you better stay
away from computers and let others handle difficult stuff.

Print to PDF printer drivers always existed in Windows (cute PDF was my
favorite but there were a handful that worked just fine).

Then came along the "save as PDF" in Microsoft Office, what, about 5 or 10
years ago? And now we have "Print to PDF" as a bona fide printer driver in
Windows 10, which makes all the old printing solutions (almost) obsolete.

I say almost only because they still result in different values of WYSIWYG.

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 11:00:51 -0400, Mayayana
wrote:

Interestingly, virtually everyone who
has written even a PDF viewer has chosen to
respect Adobe's file restriction flags, even though
it's not necessary. (I've recompiled Sumatra myself
to ignore them.) Adobe made the format
public but they still seem to run the show.

I don't remember the exact process but I was able to remove printing
restrictions and passwords (as I recall) using something called The Gimp
which all of you are certainly familiar with (it used some kind of very
slow page-by-page ps-to-pdf conversion even though it was pdf to pdf).

I've also used commercial pdf-to-office converters in the past, when
working for a company, so I know what they can do. They aren't perfect but
they're often pretty good if the file contains text more than images.

I was just hoping in Windows 10, that things would get better.
Apparently nothing has changed, which isn't what I had expected but it's
not a complete surprise either.

I had seen this "edit pdf in word" document but it didn't work for me.
https://support.office.com/en-us/art...B-233379C2F63A