Re: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice Export to PDF

Hi,

Maybe overly simplistic, but you can open the PDF file with LO. It will
open in Draw and you can recover the information from there.

I hope this helps.
Rémy.
Le samedi 07 février 2026 à 09:35 -0500, Leonard Beeghley a écrit :
> Try using an application called pdfgear to convert the pdf to an
> excel or
> word document, whichever is appropriate. You'll probably have some
> formatting issues... Good luck.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 7, 2026 at 9:10 AM Waltr <waltr@protonmail.ch> wrote:
>
> > Peter,
> >
> > I consider this important, and have struggled with this in the
> > past.
> > There are a number of means to back convert from pdf.  Most will
> > preserve
> > the text, but many will not preserve the layout and formatting
> > data.  A
> > number of on line services will allow you to upload and convert to
> > MSWord
> > (.docx) and Libreoffice will read the .docx.  There are a few that
> > work
> > well, but we, as a rule do not use these services because of the
> > widespread
> > and rampant data harvesting from internet companies.  We believe
> > there is
> > substantial risk to sensitive personal and company information, so
> > that
> > leaves well vetted programs.
> >
> > I've had reasonable success at high res, ocr scanning but color
> > rendition
> > is lost or distorted.  Sourceforge and GIT offer a number of open
> > source
> > programs.
> >
> > There is an older thread
> > https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/how-to-convert-pdf-to-odt/12268/8 tha
> > t has
> > some helpful suggestions, but many are upload to internet and
> > translate
> > downloads.
> >
> > I've used okular (KDE) on FreeBSD but formating loss is evident.
> >
> > This is something I think everyone would like, but I don't know
> > enough
> > about the .pdf internal formats to know if the {odt, docx, ...} is
> > a loss
> > free translation or if .pdf writers lose formating information in
> > the .pdf
> > generated file.  If anyone knows where the .pdf spec is found I can
> > take a
> > look at it and see how hard it would be.  I suspect, though that
> > since it
> > isn't done well in many cases, it is not an easy back conversion to
> > do.
> >
> >
> >
> > Walt
> >
> >
> > Sent from ProtonMail, encrypted email based in Switzerland.
> >
> > Sent with Proton Mail secure email.
> >
> > On Saturday, February 7th, 2026 at 07:12, Peter Hillier-Brook <
> > phb@hbsys.plus.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hello All,
> > >
> > > I recently created a file consisting of 1 page, containing a 4
> > > column
> > > table and exported it to PDF, foolishly failing to save the
> > > original in
> > > ODT. Does anyone know of a means of reversing the export to
> > > reproduce
> > > the original, editable ODT file?
> > >
> > > I know that this is not very important, but it would be nice if
> > > the
> > > possibility existed, thus avoiding the tedium of re-typing the
> > > document.
> > >
> > > Regards.
> > >
> > > Peter HB
> > >
> > > --
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>
> -- 
> Leonard Beeghley

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