Including PDFs (import) into a document

[forrie]

I have a large appendix of items I need to attach to a report that are in PDF format. I've just realized what a mess I may have with this, as I can't find a way to import this into Writer so that I can properly add headers/footers, etc.

I don't need to edit the PDFs, I've seen PDF Import extensions that are for that purpose and that's not what I am looking for.

I have Adobe Acrobat, which can save to MS Word docx format. But there doesn't seem to be a clear way to import these into OpenOffice -- though this may actually work. In fact, there is no "Import" in the Oo menu, so I'm not sure how this would be done.

I may have to manually print all these out and collate that way, but I am hoping there is a clever way to solve this problem.


Thanks!

[robleyd]

MS Word docx format. But there doesn't seem to be a clear way to import these into OpenOffice

You can simply open a .docx file with File | Open; note that there may be some formatting that is not rendered by AOO as it would be by MS Office.

[John_Ha]

On rereading your post I find it is is ambiguous.

Do you have material in a PDF which you need to add to a Writer file?

If so, be aware that PDF files break each line into a paragraph so you will have a lot of editing if you merely copy from the PDF and paste into Writer. A better approach is probably to go to a file conversion site like zamzar.com and convert the PDF to a .odt file. Copy from the .odt file. This will take care of the majority of the editing. See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in, and save files, as .odt.

Or do you have material in Writer you need to add to an existing PDF file?

If so, use ADobe ACrobat to edit the PDF file and add the material. Consider creating a PDF from the material and using PDFSAM to merge the two PDF fuiles into one.

If this solves the problem, please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.

[musikai]

There is a way to include external PDFs into a final PDF exported by OO or LO, the way that these are directly overlayed onto the (empty, only pagenumbers, headers etc.) pages of the odt.

This requires the installation of the free external program pdftk and the usage of my feely provided odt.
You can find it in my signature (LOSA).

[forrie]

I apologize for leaving out context.

The PDFs I have are not diagrams or pictures, they are printouts of documents, being presented as-is in an evidentiary context -- therefore, I cannot simply copy-and-paste.

The PDFs were not created by Oo, but the result of "print as PDF" (Mac platform).

Since posting this, I have found a way to export these to *docx from Adobe Acrobat, but it still has some issues with formatting. I've actually not put together a multi-page appendix before.

I think my compromise (however improper) is simply a page separator for each appendix and include the PDFs there (printed out). But I feel like this is sloppy.


Thanks!

[John_Ha]

Two more ways ...

1. If you need an image from the PDF, r-click it > Copy image.

2. If you want a "photocopy" of all or some of the page, Edit > Take Snapshot. Left-click and drag the mouse to highlight the area to be copied and release. This copies it to the Clipboard. Paste to an image editor and save as a PNG (if not a picture) or JPG (if a picture). Now insert the image into AOO. Note that you can zoom out the PDF page to larger than the screen size if you need and allow the drag to scroll the page to capture all of it.

[forrie]

This is a very clever idea

I'm on a Mac, so I just took a screen capture from Preview and it is reasonable. My Mac is a Macbook Retina, so the screen resolution is not bad.

I was hoping that there might be some nifty way to do the same with a simple PDF -- I don't have images in there, just text that needs to be as-is.


Thanks.

Two more ways ...

1. If you need an image from the PDF, r-click it > Copy image.

2. If you want a "photocopy" of all or some of the page, Edit > Take Snapshot. Left-click and drag the mouse to highlight the area to be copied and release. This copies it to the Clipboard. Paste to an image editor and save as a PNG (if not a picture) or JPG (if a picture). Now insert the image into AOO. Note that you can zoom out the PDF page to larger than the screen size if you need and allow the drag to scroll the page to capture all of it.

[John_Ha]

See my earlier thread.

If you want to end up with a PDF, then consider creating a PDF from the .odt file, and use PDFSAM to merge the two (or more) PDF files into one.

If this solves the problem, please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.

[RoryOF]

John_Ha beat me to that last suggestion. Possibly this is the best way to go.

[forrie]

I used John_Ha's suggestion, though laborious it was very simple and effecive. As for assembling the PDFs, I used Adobe Acrobat DC to "Combine" (in their parlance) the docs. This may help deal with a funky problem that I don't believe most word processors are set up for, which is I have a each appendix item individually numbered, such as "Appendix X, page 1 of 3" -- well, if you do that, you can't expect a separately operational page numbering item on a footer, for example. If I scan in the images, hack them into a large PDF then, with Adobe Acrobat DC, I can export them to *.doc, I may be able to do this

Fun times.

I tried getting an extension to work in Oo and I couldn't figure out how to operate it, so I gave up. Adobe was easier.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

[musikai]

If I scan in the images, hack them into a large PDF then, with Adobe Acrobat DC, I can export them to *.doc, I may be able to do this

Tell us how it comes out after conversion to .doc then to .odt.
Do you add the pagenumbers in Adobe Acrobat DC?

The way I realize doubled pagenumbering is to add the individual page numbering into the footer of the single PDFs in the application that creates these PDFs. In my case the music notation program.

Then I can merge these PDFs into the main document in Openoffice and add the normal page numbering eg. in the header.
As described in my above post I use LOSA for that, which could also be used to add the individual page numbering to already existing PDFs, that you no longer have the original creation apllication.