Batch Converting PDF to DOCX Makes for Easy Editing

Summary: As the third most common file type on the web, PDFs are great for sharing information. However, businesses needing to make edits beyond what's possible with PDFs must convert these files to another format such as DOCX. On a large scale, one by one conversion is inefficient. In this blog, we’ll look at how automating the process with batch conversion provides an easy and reliable solution.

If you’ve spent any time online, you’ve likely dealt with a PDF or two. As the third most common file format on the web with HTML and XHTML taking the lead, PDFs are a great way for sharing information reliably because they display the same across multiple devices and platforms. You can even edit many of the elements in a PDF quite easily with quality editing tools such as Apryse WebViewer.

But what about when you need to edit a PDF with more substantial changes such as editing large sections of text or reformatting a table? For these and other situations, it’s necessary to convert the PDF to another file format that allows more editing and processing options, such as DOCX. Automated conversion also retains elements such as annotations, sticky notes, and other critical metadata, making the conversion more meaningful.

While one-off conversions are fine for casual users and small businesses, this just isn’t efficient on a larger scale. For example, an audit firm handling hundreds of statements and transaction records in PDFs with inconsistent tables that need to be reformatted before processing. Converting the PDFs to DOCX one at a time so the tables can be edited would be tedious, error-prone, and time consuming. This is when PDF batch conversion saves the day by handling large batches of PDFs quickly and reliably, while maintaining essential document elements.

For converting multiple PDFs at the same time, we’ll need to use the command-line program DocPub. We’ll also need to download the Structured Output Module so DocPub can convert the files to MS Office formats. In this example, we’ll convert to DOCX, but we could use the same process for converting to PPTX or XLSX, if we preferred.

We will also need to get a license key, but it’s free to get a trial one so that you test things out.

Note: DocPub, the Structured Output Module, and Apryse SDK are all available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

For more details on DocPub commands with examples, see our documentation page.

DocPub has parameters that make converting multiple files even easier, such as processing all subfolders and using wildcard characters.

Process Subfolders: Use the following code to convert all files in dir1 and dir2, and all subfolders to DOCX.

Wildcard Characters: Use the following code to convert all files starting with x in the current folder to DOCX.

Businesses facing the challenges of converting high volumes of PDFs to other file formats for more editing options require an efficient and reliable solution. Using DocPub with the Structured Output Module from Apryse is an easy-to-use, multi-platform option for batch converting PDFs to other file formats.

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