Did You Know April 2003

Did You Know

Did You Know . . .

.....that you can convert adobe pdf files to Word or WordPerfect documents? Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format files are popular, especially on the Internet, but you can't edit or save them in another format with just the free Acrobat Reader (you need the full version of Adobe Acrobat to do so). However, you can extract the text from a PDF file and paste it into either a Word or WordPerfect document. Open the PDF file in Acrobat Reader, select Edit, Select All (or press Ctrl-A), and then choose Edit, Copy (or press Ctrl-C). Now open a new or existing document in either Word or WordPerfect and select Edit, Paste (or press Ctrl-V) to insert the text at the current cursor location. There's a catch, though: Acrobat Reader's Select All command selects only the text on the current page, so you'll need to repeat the process for each page of the document. And once the text is in the word processor's document, it'll probably look a fright, what with all the strange characters, odd font sizes and styles, and general PDF mayhem. You'll have to do your document formatting manually.
(Legal note: Be sure to observe copyright laws when moving text from PDF files into your own documents.)

.....that you can change the background in Word? By default Word's display is black lettering on a white background. If you prefer, you can reverse this with a blue background and white text. [Similar to the old DOS version of WordPerfect 5.1]. Some people believe the blue/white combo is easier on the eyes. To make the change, open the Tools menu, select Options, click the General tab, then check the Blue Background, White Text box.

.....that you can ‘have it your way'? No, I don't mean a Whopper. I'm talking about program toolbars and almost all of them are customizable. Simply right-click on the toolbar and a dialog box should appear. From there you can customize to your heart's content. For instance, I have removed several items from the WordPerfect toolbar and added items of my own choosing because they are functions that I use every day, such as PasteSpecial, and macros for switching from upper to lower case. I've also moved the Save icon to the end of the toolbar where it is more convenient for me. So go ahead and have it your way, but hold the lettuce and the pickle.

Back to the top