how to insert PDF into Word document - please help

[Adam]

I have a PDF file that I would like to insert into Word,
much like an attachment at the end of a legal document.
What's the best way to do this?

 

[Adam]

Insert --> object --> Adobe Acrobat document
check the box "display as icon"
hit; Ok
choose the PDF file.

Thanks, displaying an icon link wasn't quite what I had in mind but
it seems like there's no easier way to display the actual pages of
the PDF file than to take snapshots of each page and insert them as pictures.

 

[Paul]

Thanks, displaying an icon link wasn't quite what I had in mind but
it seems like there's no easier way to display the actual pages of
the PDF file than to take snapshots of each page and insert them as pictures.

If you find a tool, that converts a PDF page to an image, you
can make an exact copy. No need to use screenshots.

Try Photoshop for example, which will pull in a PDF page and
allow you to work on it. You can even tell Photoshop what DPI
to use, when rendering the page. (When you open a PDF in
Photoshop, it asks what page you want. But if the document
is protected in some way, then it's going to follow whatever
DRM rules are involved. And in that case, you might have no choice
but to use screenshots.)

GhostScript is another example of a toolkit for dealing
with PS and PDF. And has image output options. But, for
geeks only The code is also used as the base of
some other conversion packages (as it taught people a lot
about the PS and PDF standards).

Once the image is pulled into the document, the impact might
be 50KB or so per page. It really depends on the page content.
If it's a black and white document of some sort, it can be
quite economical once compressed. You'd want a lossless
compression method, if one is available in your workflow.
(I hate documents, where an accidental de-res to 72DPI
has occurred, and all the images in the doc are useless.
Careful test by the document's author, can detect this
before the audience for the document complains.) I don't
know whether Word has that capability or not, but it's
certainly an option with things like Acrobat Distiller
for final output.

Paul

 

[Adam]

pictures.

If you find a tool, that converts a PDF page to an image, you
can make an exact copy. No need to use screenshots.

Try Photoshop for example, which will pull in a PDF page and
allow you to work on it. You can even tell Photoshop what DPI
to use, when rendering the page. (When you open a PDF in
Photoshop, it asks what page you want. But if the document
is protected in some way, then it's going to follow whatever
DRM rules are involved. And in that case, you might have no choice
but to use screenshots.)

GhostScript is another example of a toolkit for dealing
with PS and PDF. And has image output options. But, for
geeks only The code is also used as the base of
some other conversion packages (as it taught people a lot
about the PS and PDF standards).

Once the image is pulled into the document, the impact might
be 50KB or so per page. It really depends on the page content.
If it's a black and white document of some sort, it can be
quite economical once compressed. You'd want a lossless
compression method, if one is available in your workflow.
(I hate documents, where an accidental de-res to 72DPI
has occurred, and all the images in the doc are useless.
Careful test by the document's author, can detect this
before the audience for the document complains.) I don't
know whether Word has that capability or not, but it's
certainly an option with things like Acrobat Distiller
for final output.

Paul

Thanks, I might try the image route with www.zamzar.com since
I don't have Photoshop. I tried converting the PDF to DOC (both via
www.zamzar.com and Save As from Adobe Acrobat) but
wasn't quite satisfied with the quality of the result.

 

[Paul]

Thanks, I might try the image route with www.zamzar.com since
I don't have Photoshop. I tried converting the PDF to DOC (both via
www.zamzar.com and Save As from Adobe Acrobat) but
wasn't quite satisfied with the quality of the result.

The trick would be, to render the image at, say, 300DPI, and
check to see that it was preserved properly, all the way to
doing sample prints. I've had trouble in the past, with
various workflows, where the resolution drops to 72dpi and
looks like crap. So check the results, via desktop viewing,
via printing, via print to PDF again, and make sure
the full resolution is available.

I've even seen user manuals, coming from retail manufacturing sites,
with that problem (all images reduced to the point of being
unreadable). And that smacks of an unprofessional approach
to document preparation. It doesn't take that much work to
verify the thing you've produced.

Images rendered at 300 or 600DPI will be huge, and as long
as the workflow has compression, that shrinks how much of
an impact that has. If the image has a lot of detail (such
as a PDF that started off as a scan of a document), there can
be noise in the background, that increases file size. Careful
thresholding of the image, can remove the noise, and result
in less disk space when the image is stored.

To give an example, when I had a document, for which no copies
were handed out, I scanned them, and put them into a PDF. With
lossless compression inside the PDF, it only cost 50KB per
scanned page. Meaning, it would still be possible to email
a small document made that way, without breaking something.

In terms of free image editors, there is GIMP, but I hate
the interface. You can use that, if you can figure out how
to use it. And if that tool attempts to do the equivalent
of Photoshop (namely open a PDF page as an image), you
need a copy of GhostScript installed on the computer as
a "helper", to do the actual conversion.

Paul

 

[Bob Willard]

I have a PDF file that I would like to insert into Word,
much like an attachment at the end of a legal document.
What's the best way to do this?

If the PDF file is mostly text, you can cut'n'paste the text pieces
directly: open the PDF with the Acrobat reader, select and cut the
text, then open a new DOC file with Word and paste the text piece into
the DOC file.

Then you can attack the image pieces with PhotoShop or PaintShopPro or
PrintScreen. Once an image piece is pasted into your favorite image
editor, you can crop and save as a JPG which Word can insert into a DOC
file.

This method is time-consuming, but does not require any new apps other
than some image editor.

 

[Adam]

Then don't check the box "display as icon" and document is embdded with a veiw of said
document.

You did write "insert into Word, much like an attachment" which is displaying it as an
Icon.

Sorry for the confusion. I would like to be able to
view the PDF contents inside Word. I do not want the reader to
have to click on a link object in order to read the PDF contents.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you have Acrobat, you can use its ability to save to Word, but what
you'll end up with is basically an image, one JPEG per page IIRC. Another
approach is to use SnagIt (www.techsmith.com; free trial available) to
"print" the document to the SnagIt printer, which creates one image per page
in the file format of your choice. Both these approaches may give you better
results than taking snapshots, but you'll still have to insert the images in
Word; you can either set the wrapping to In Front of Text, allowing you to
expand the image size to fill the page, or crop the images to fit within the
page margins.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Adam]

That was the intial impression provided and as I indicated, don't check the box "display
as an icon".

Here is an example of a PDF (of a scanned image) that was inserted as an object within MS
Word not as an icon.

http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk/Image1.jpg

Your JPG shows what I want but even when "Display as icon" is not checked,
the PDF opens up in Adobe Acrobat (not Word). What am I missing?

 

[Adam]

It will happen the first time you embed the Acrobat Object. Just save the ..DOC file.
Re-open it and you will see the Acrobat Object in the Word document.

Thanks, but I only see the first page. How do I get Word to
show all pages of the PDF file?

 

[Adam]

You can't and you didn't say it was a multi-paged PDF. The best method to embed a PDF as
an icon. Datafiles are not meant to be fully displayed in another data files as you are
expecting. Either as an icon or via display of first page, double-clicking on the
embedded object will cause the embedded object to be displayed in its native fashion. The
advantage is you are not dealing wityh multiple disk files as the one Word document has
the other documents embdded within.

Okay, thanks!

 

[salgud]

You can't and you didn't say it was a multi-paged PDF. The best method to embed a PDF as
an icon. Datafiles are not meant to be fully displayed in another data files as you are
expecting. Either as an icon or via display of first page, double-clicking on the
embedded object will cause the embedded object to be displayed in its native fashion. The
advantage is you are not dealing wityh multiple disk files as the one Word document has
the other documents embdded within.

Actually, he did, and quite clearly, in his first reply, "it seems like
there's no easier way to display the actual pages of
the PDF file"

 

[Adam]

How about going the other direction?

If you have Acrobat (not just the reader), you could convert your Word
doc to a PDF, then use Acrobat to merge that with the other PDF
document. I do stuff like that all the time. You can rearrange pages if
you like.

Thanks, I do this all the time as well and love it.
However, the reader wants a Word document.