Tag: google drive

Converting a PDF file to a Word Document (for free) using Google Docs

UPDATE: This post is no longer relevant since Win2PDF now supports for converting Word Files, Open Document, and Rich Text Format files to PDF.

This article about Paul Manafort made the headlines the other day, and it got us wondering:  How many people know how to convert a PDF file to a Microsoft Word document?  Do you?

While there are some specialized commercial programs that do this conversion, there are also free alternatives available.  One of the easiest methods is to use Google Docs to do the conversion from PDF to Word.  Here are the basic steps:

 1. Open the PDF file in Google Drive

From a Gmail account or any other Google app, click on the Google Apps icon.  This will allow you to open another Google app associated with your account, including Google Drive.

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Once Google Drive is open, choose Upload files… from the My Drive drop-down menu.

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Then, choose the PDF file on your hard drive that you wish to convert to a Microsoft Word document.

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2. Right-mouse click on the PDF file in Google Drive, and open the file in Google Docs

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When you open with Google Docs, the PDF file will be converted to a Google doc.  And once it is a Google Doc, it can be saved as another format, including Microsoft Word.

3. Download the file as a Microsoft Word (.docx) formatted file

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And that’s it.  Currently, Google’s conversion process does seem somewhat limited and some formatting may be lost, but it will give you an editable Word document from the original PDF file.

Now, what if you don’t want your PDF files converted to Word, or modified in any way?

For that, you just need to encrypt the PDF file to prevent modifications.  And there’s an easy solution for this as well.  This can be done using our Win2PDF Pro software.

New Year’s Resolution (part 2): Organize and Store your PDFs in the Cloud

Last week we discussed going paperless by creating PDFs and storing them in the cloud, and today we’d like to continue that theme by looking at some of these services in general, and how the process can be automated.

The good news is that there are MANY cloud storage services that you can use to accomplish this type of cloud storage with various levels of free starter accounts.  You just set up an account with the particular service that’s best for you, designate a folder to ‘sync’ on your PC, and then just copy or save PDF files to this folder.  Here are some of the major services we’ve tried:

How do you use these services to back up PDF files?  Easy.  Once you’ve selected and installed your cloud storage service, just use Win2PDF to save your files to your PC’s designated Sync directory.

Cloud Storage Folders in Explorer
Cloud Storage Sync Folders in Explorer

And if you want to automate this even further with Win2PDF, our latest Win2PDF 7.5 release has an automatic naming/saving feature.  If you enable this feature, you can automatically have all of your files saved to the folder without any prompting.

So, which service is best?  It really depends.  Each service has a free option with a starter amount of storage.  We’ll be reviewing these services in the next couple of weeks and post our findings here to help you determine which one may be best for you.