Converting PDFs and importing text files

Flatten PDFs to Images

Task menu ▸ Word Helpers ▸ Flatten PDFs to Images

Converts the pages of a PDF into images. Afterwards no text in the PDF can be selected, copied or searched – and comments, form fields and annotations are burned in.

It is the same operation as finalizing redactions, just without the redactions. Useful when a document is not meant to be worked on further.

Keep the original. You will not get the text back out of an image PDF.

You choose a file or a folder; for a folder the add-in asks whether to include subdirectories, and with many files it asks again.

Then two settings:

• Where it is saved – in a subdirectory, or in the same location with the suffix _flat.
• Output DPI – the add-in gives you the guidance: 150 smaller and lower quality (not recommended for OCR), 200 balanced (minimum for reliable OCR), 300 high quality and larger files (recommended for OCR). Allowed values are 72 to 600.

Convert PDFs to Txt

Task menu ▸ Word Helpers ▸ Convert PDFs to Txt

The counterpart: it pulls the readable text out of a file or a whole folder.

In the window you choose what happens to the result – both are possible:

• Save .txt file(s) – creates text files usable outside Word too.
• Insert into document – puts the text at the cursor. Available only when exactly one file is selected.

With no target chosen the add-in points that out. At the end you get a summary: successfully converted, skipped (empty content), unsupported file types. A detailed log is in the clipboard.

Scanned PDFs produce nothing – there is no text layer there to extract. Such files appear as skipped.

Import Text File

Task menu ▸ Word Helpers ▸ Import Text File

Brings the content of a file into Word. Supported are, among others, .txt, .rtf, .doc, .docx, .pdf, .csv, .json, .xml, .html and .pptx.

The way to work on content with the add-in's text features when it does not exist as a Word document.