7 replies to this topic

[Rick Conklin]

Our church publishes sermons as PDF files. I've tried to save-as "text" in Acrobat. But, it still loses much of the formatting. Since PDF files are so widely used, why does Accordance not have import as PDF as an option?

[Helen Brown]

The reason is simply that the format is extremely variable and complex. Our expert developers have a hard time trying to import from a PDF to an Accordance module. Making that import robust enough fro public use would be next to impossible.

[Rick Bennett]

Our church publishes sermons as PDF files. I've tried to save-as "text" in Acrobat. But, it still loses much of the formatting. Since PDF files are so widely used, why does Accordance not have import as PDF as an option?

Have you tried exporting as HTML, then trying to import as a user tool? This might work better, but as Helen indicated there are many factors involved with exporting to and from PDF.

You could also ask the church to send the files in an easier to work with format, maybe RTF or Word?

[Rick Conklin]

Have you tried exporting as HTML, then trying to import as a user tool? This might work better, but as Helen indicated there are many factors involved with exporting to and from PDF.

You could also ask the church to send the files in an easier to work with format, maybe RTF or Word?

I found a MAC program that will convert a PDF file to an HTML file. The result displays in a browser beautifully. However, when I import that html file into Accordance it looks terrible. It appears to have lost all LF/CRs and has substituted lots and lots of spaces. I really don't want to spend the time to clean that up.

I tried to change the name to ".HTM". That didn't help.

Any ideas?

Rick

[Rick Bennett]

I found a MAC program that will convert a PDF file to an HTML file. The result displays in a browser beautifully. However, when I import that html file into Accordance it looks terrible. It appears to have lost all LF/CRs and has substituted lots and lots of spaces. I really don't want to spend the time to clean that up.

I tried to change the name to ".HTM". That didn't help.

Any ideas?

Rick

See Dr. J's podcast for tips on this. Regarding LF/CRs, you need to convert them to Mac Classic (CR) using a text editor such as TextWrangler (free) before attempting to import into Accordance. That alone may fix the majority of the issues you're having.

Rick

[revtim]

I found a MAC program that will convert a PDF file to an HTML file. The result displays in a browser beautifully


What is the program?

[Rick Conklin]

I found a MAC program that will convert a PDF file to an HTML file. The result displays in a browser beautifully


What is the program?

The program is DeskUNpdf for MAC. It displays the text from the PDF file as an html file in my browser and looks just like the pdf file. (I used it as a "trial". Haven't purchased it yet)

However the import to Accordance looked so messy, it wasn't worth it.

One person said I need to also do more conversions with the CR/LF so they were in Classic MAC style. But, I don't see that mentioned on the Dr J video when he demonstrates the import. How does he import an HTML without first converting the CR/LF to "Classic MAC"?

Rick

Edited by Rick Conklin, 17 May 2011 - 07:56 AM.

[Rick Bennett]

The program is DeskUNpdf for MAC. It displays the text from the PDF file as an html file in my browser and looks just like the pdf file. (I used it as a "trial". Haven't purchased it yet)

However the import to Accordance looked so messy, it wasn't worth it.

One person said I need to also do more conversions with the CR/LF so they were in Classic MAC style. But, I don't see that mentioned on the Dr J video when he demonstrates the import. How does he import an HTML without first converting the CR/LF to "Classic MAC"?

Rick

I haven't watched the podcast in a while. If he failed to mention that you must convert the line endings to CR, then it was an oversight on his part. You must do this for a successful import. In TextWrangler it is very quick to do. See here:

 Screen shot 2011-05-17 at 9.03.59 AM.png   56.63K   43 downloads

EDIT: Alternatively, your PDF conversion app might have this option as well. PDF2Office Pro does (I believe they have a free or lite version as well).