Importing PDF problem

users
#1

I'm currently working on a large project that requires me to import many
documents from my colleagues, some in word or PDF formats, into a single
file. Libreoffice doesn't work if I try Insert->File... on a PDF file
(I get an error popup saying Error rereading the file).

I can open the PDF file (in draw) and cut and paste each PDF page into
the document, but that is painful.

Is there a way to make File->Insert work, perhaps via a macro? If not,
consider this a feature request.

David

#2

What OS are you using?

In some pdf readers you can export the entire file as a plain text file and this file can be opened in Writer or imported into Calc. I do not know if this would less or more painful. You would have the entire file at once but would need to format the text.

#3

Hi Jay,

Thanks for the reply. I'm using Linux (Slackware). Unfortunately,
exporting to text is not an option here as the PDF's contain various
drawings that can't be omitted.

David

#4

The most painless option is find a PDF to .doc [.odt] conversion package. I know that there are some low costing package that do this, but I would like to see a free one somewhere.

The "large project" and "many documents" seem to me that if the number is large enough, you would want to have an auto-conversion package for the PDF documents.

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
I tend to find importing as plain text and then applying styles saves me hours and hours.  Before doing that people's mad formatting would drive me nuts.

I've managed to stop them sending me Pdfs too.  Mostly it was the argument about "being consistent" through-out the newsletter but it also helped to respect people's aims rather than their results and the positive comments from readers didn't hurt.  It depends how slavish you have to be.  This answer (to stand up for yourself) may not help.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
Ouch!  Single images are ok as you can right-click and save them or even just drag them out of the Pdf sometimes but if it's tons of logos or overlapping images then it can be a total Pita.  My cheating way was to use Gimp to import (luckily only a page or 2 at a time and only a couple in the entire thing), crop and resize, sometimes change RGB into "indexed" and then alpha channel the white-space and plonked on the page.  After a few of those people stopped sending me stuff as Pdfs! :))
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

Hi.
I just tried an interesting thing.
Uploaded a PDF with images to google drive. Right clicked the PDF and open with google docs. Then the PDF was converted to a google doc and I could download the PDF as an odt and edit it.

Steve

#8

Hi Jay,

Thanks for the reply. I'm using Linux (Slackware). Unfortunately,
exporting to text is not an option here as the PDF's contain various
drawings that can't be omitted.

David

what format does this 'single file' have to be in? if it can be itself a pdf then use pdftk.

pdftk allows you to 'join' multiple pdfs into one.

take the .doc stuff and convert to pdf then put it all together via pdftk.

the syntax for pdftk is a bit weird (I find it hard to remember) but at the same time very simple.

Felmon

#9

Op 05/04/2013 22:18, David Ronis schreef:

I'm currently working on a large project that requires me to import many
documents from my colleagues, some in word or PDF formats, into a single
file. Libreoffice doesn't work if I try Insert->File... on a PDF file
(I get an error popup saying Error rereading the file).

I can open the PDF file (in draw) and cut and paste each PDF page into
the document, but that is painful.

Is there a way to make File->Insert work, perhaps via a macro?

it can surly been automated, import the PDF in draw and then export the elements to a writerdoc, you will find a lot of code in the "Gimmicks" library (gettexts>>getdrawstrings)

hope it helps

Fernand

#10

Information please: what is a google drive?

--doug

#11

Google's online service. If you have gmail account you automatically have access to Google Drive and Google Docs using your Gmail account.

#12

Hi :slight_smile:
It's a Cloud storage space provided by Google,  Generally with these Cloud spaces they let you have just enough for free that you get hooked into using it which tempts you into paying for a more useful size. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#13

Hi.
Google keeps changing the name of things.
When you get a gmail account you have a thing also called google docs which might now be called google drive.
When you sign into your gmail account it is up the top google navigation bar.
Steve

#14

But I still have 5GB for free, and that doesn't include documents converted to google docs which are free and not counted in your quota.
Steve

#15

Hi :slight_smile:
Ahh, you can use google-docs without having a gmail account.  I can login using my yahoo account.  Gmail obviously integrates it better to make it easier to use.  I think there is a small amount of space just from using google-docs.  I think google-drive is an extra amount of space you can use.

I get 5Gb from Ubuntu One but that doesn't seem to have some of the clever functionality google's offerings have but on the other hand it automatically syncs with my Ubuntu machine at home and then again with my Ubuntu machine at work.  I think google's syncs with google phones and things?  
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#16

When I open the PDF file and try to export it, all I see are graphics
formats (e.g., .bpm, .jpeg, .wfm etc.). I've tried several and they are
importable into my document (as a picture), but it seems that only one
page was exported, which is more complicated than copying and pasting
from each page of the draw object.

In the mean time, I've discovered a free conversion site,
www.zamzar.com, and they were able to convert the PDF files to odt (with
the images as bitmaps. Now here's another strange thing: I can use LO
to open the converted file and the document looks as I expect; however,
when I insert the file (insert->file) into my larger document, only the
text is picked up, leaving blank spaces where the images should go.

This sounds like a bug, but perhaps there is some setting that controls
this. One other thing: when I open the single/converted pdf->odt
document, the navigator shows draw objects and graphics objects as 0.

#17

David,
LibreOffice allows graphics to have placeholders in case rendering such takes a lot of time when scrolling. Maybe yours are turned off. Try Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice Writer -> View
Under "Display", there should be a checkbox titled "Graphics and objects". Make sure this is checked.
Hope this helps.
Girvin Herr

David Ronis wrote:

#18

Hi :) 
Also 2 things;

1.  It might be worth uploading your Pdfs to Google-docs and the opening them with Google-docs to save as Odt.  Someone here recently said that seemed to solve all their problems with Pdfs so it would be interesting to see if yours work too.

2.  if you right-click on images in a Pdf it generally allows you to "Save Graphic".  Of course this way you have to place them again.

3.  If you just copy&paste text straight out of the Pdf and into a document as "Unformatted text" and then apply styles it might end up with a much more consistent document but again you would have to follow 2 above in order to get all the pictures/photos/logos/images back in.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#19

Curiously wondering what this 'new' PDFtk is -
           and how to acquire it ...
              or is this something only for Linux users :wink:

       The longer I'm on this amazing list, the more I'm learning about
these 'glorified-typewriters' :slight_smile:

#20

Gimmicks' library ??? :wink:
           what's in this? and where is it located? and ... ... ... ???

       Just curiously wondering :slight_smile:

Op 05/04/2013 22:18, David Ronis schreef: