How to Convert PDF to Word for Free

By Gavin Phillips. If I had a dollar for each and every time someone has asked me to suggest a great PDF to Word converter, I’d probably be able to shop at Whole Foods every day for a month. It’s one of the conversion types topping the formatting pile.
My love of organic fruit and veg aside, here are some of the best free PDF to Word converters around.

Offline Conversion Tools

While you can choose from numerous online PDF to Word converters, sometimes you’ll actually want your own readily available software. Firstly, offline conversion tools are by and large much faster than their online counterparts, and secondly, your online conversion will remain online.
Anything other than the odd document shouldn’t be converted using an online tool, e.g. anything sensitive, business documents, and information you’d like to keep private.

1. PDFMate

 

 

I’ve used PDFMate for some time now as it not only accurately converts PDF to Word, you’ll also get Text, EPUB, HTML, SWF, and JPEG conversions thrown into the deal.





It features a very simple interface, it is free, and comes with some handy additional tools, such as batch conversions, document encryption, multi-language support, and a host of other customizable settings.

2. WinScan2PDF

 

 

From an application with many functions, to one that does the bare minimum. Importantly, it completes its single role well, granting it inclusion in this list.





WinScan2PDF is a tiny application. At just 30 KB, it could be the smallest piece of software you use today. You have four options: Select Source, Scan, Multiple Pages, and Cancel. The design is intuitive (how couldn’t it be?!), and you simply point it at whichever document you’d like to convert, and off you go.

3. UniPDF

 

 

Finally, in the offline category, UniPDF, a relatively versatile conversion tool with support for multiple file formats, including Word, Text, and HTML.





Throw into the bargain PDF to JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIF, GIF, PCX, and TGA, as well as batch conversions and image resolutions settings, and UniPDF becomes a great, free, allaround conversion tool.

Online Conversion Tools

As I mentioned in the Offline Conversion Tools preface, you should only use online tools when necessary.
Now, an online conversion service isn’t going to splurge your private details all over the Internet, let alone leak your precious banking details to the world. But it will make a copy of your conversion as part of the process, and as we should all know by now, what goes online, stays online.
I also hate having to give an email address as part of the process, knowing you’re likely setting your inbox up for some serious incoming spam.
That said, they are extremely convenient, and many online conversion services offer you a simply staggering amount of potential output formats.

4. Smallpdf

 

 

Smallpdf is one of a massive number of online PDF converters. So its very inclusion in this list should illustrate its usefulness versus other equivalent products. It also has a jolly snazzy aesthetic, which wins it further points.





Smallpdf offers a range of PDF conversion services, including PDF to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, JPEG, and HTML. You can also use the online service to merge multiple PDFs into a single file, or split PDFs into separate documents.
Interestingly, Smallpdf also offers a document password locking and unlocking feature, though any truly encrypted documents will remain so.

5. CloudConvert

 

 

CloudConvert has the added bonus of converting almost any file format you throw at it to almost any other file format you like.
Its PDF to Word conversion is accurate, tables are well preserved and remain in the correct location, and it handled some particularly image and bullet-point laden documents with ease.





CloudConvert really does appear to be “come for the PDF to Word conversions, stay for everything else.”

Convert Using Word

Of course! You can use Microsoft Word itself to convert a PDF into an editable document. However, this feature is only available to users running Office 2013 and Office 2016.
Open Microsoft Word 2013 or 2016. Head to File > Open. Browse to and open the PDF. You’ll meet a message explaining that a small amount of reformatting may occur, and that line breaks and page breaks may not be quite where you are expecting them.
In my experience, the correspondence between PDF and Word is usually quite close, depending on the nature of the PDF. Word doesn’t always handle tables very well, so bear that in mind.

You’re All Set to Convert

The five conversion tools we’ve selected each take care of PDF to Word conversion extremely well. You have the option to use Word, but as even Microsoft is prepared to admit, it can be a little lacking, especially when you consider the other options available to you. Spare yourself time and stress, and use one of these!

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/convert-pdf-word-free/

What's New in Office 2016: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook

By James T. Cains. Microsoft’s new Office 2016 release includes many new features that span most or all of the applications in the suite. (To find out more about these new global features, check out What’s New in Office 2016: Global Features.) However, some of the most important updates happen in the individual applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. In this article, we discuss the most notable features of each of those applications.

Word 2016

Microsoft Word users have wanted this feature for, well, ever: Real-time co-editing of Word documents — that is, two or more people can open and edit the document at the same time, and everyone accessing the document can see the changes being made in real-time. Google Docs users have enjoyed this feature for years; finally, Microsoft brings this ability to Word.

The key to making this work is storing the file on cloud storage. You will have to store the document on Microsoft’s cloud storage solution (OneDrive or OneDrive for Business), so that others can access the document. From there, you can allow others to view and edit the document just like on Google Drive.

This new feature will help solve the many issues with sharing documents and keeping track of different versions. No longer will you have to worry about if you have the latest version of a document, nor will you have to be concerned with merging all the changes from multiple documents into one. With co-editing in Word 2016, everyone can make changes to the same document.

Microsoft plans to roll this out for Word 2016 first and then eventually add it to Excel and PowerPoint.

Excel 2016

The big changes to Excel in 2016 are in the area of business intelligence; that is, tools and processes that enable you to gather data from many different sources and turn it into insightful information that can help you make better business decisions. The two most important things to note here are the following:

    Excel’s Power Query add-on is now part of the core functionality of Excel. You no longer need to install it.

    Excel’s one-click forecasting tool, Forecast Sheet, provides an easy way to forecast the future of your data.

With Power Query, you can pull data from a variety of external sources. Imagine pulling data from web sites like Wikipedia, from social media sites like Facebook, or from any number of database types, such as SQL, Azure, Oracle, Access, Sybase, and so on. You can then merge all that data into spreadsheets that help you make better decisions.

Power Query hasn’t added any new features from the Excel 2013 version; just the fact that it’s now part of Excel’s core functionality makes it easier to find and use.

With Forecast Sheet, you can provide forecasts of your data to business leaders. If your data is influenced by seasonal factors, you can tell Excel to factor those into the forecast as well. You can even set confidence intervals for your forecasts, which will give you upper and lower boundaries for the forecasted data.

PowerPoint 2016

PowerPoint itself doesn’t get much of an overhaul in 2016, but Microsoft has given users a new presentation application called Sway. What’s the difference? Glad you asked.

PowerPoint is designed to create linear presentations — that is, you start at the first slide and progress through your slideshow until the end. And while you can jazz up your presentation with different effects and transitions, it’s still essentially a slideshow. Also, PowerPoint presentations are known to take a lot of time to put together.

Sway, on the other hand, is designed to enable you to create more free-form presentations that have a lot more flare. In Sway, you can include photos, YouTube videos, Facebook and Twitter items, you name it. But the real benefit to Sway is how its “smart engine” packages your content and formats it for you, allowing you to spend less time creating the presentation and more time planning what you want to communicate.

Outlook 2016

Outlook has probably undergone the most significant overhaul in Office 2016, especially in terms of collaboration features. With the success of Google’s Gmail, Drive, Docs, and other integrated cloud-based applications, Microsoft has realized that collaboration and cloud-based solutions are very important in professional productivity. That’s why Outlook now has the ability to provide links to files on OneDrive or OneDrive for Business; no longer do you have to actually attach the file.

Microsoft has also taken steps to help you prioritize the email that comes into your Inbox. With the new Clutter feature, Outlook moves lower priority items out of your Inbox and into a separate folder for you to look at later. Clutter looks at your email reading habits over time and learns to make these prioritization decisions from your own behavior. So, for example, if you subscribe to email newsletters that you don’t read very often or read only if the subject line catches your eye, Clutter will notice this and move those newsletters to a separate folder, making room in your Inbox for the email that really needs your attention.

Don’t mistake Clutter for a spam filter; just because Outlook moves lower priority mail to another folder doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look at it!

If you don’t like having Outlook make those email prioritization decisions for you, you can disable Clutter.

Source: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/whats-new-in-office-2016-word-excel-powerpoint-and.html?cid=dn_article

SMPlayer Media Player Review

SMPlayer is a free media player for Windows operating systems and Linux that uses the free media engines MPV andMPlayer for playback.

Like most media players nowadays, SMPlayer ships with built-in support for many popular and even lesser known video and audio formats so that it does not rely on installed codecs for playback.

Apart from great support for different formats, SMPlayer ships with a set of features such as YouTube support, automatic playback resume, or options to download subtitles that you won't find in many other players.

SMPlayer

SMPlayer is offered as a portable version for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, and as a version that needs to be installed.

The program shipped with third-party offers previously when you installed it, but that does not seem to be the case anymore. At least, no offers were presented during test installations. If you want to be absolute certain, download the portable version instead.

SMPlayer supports all major formats right when you run it as it ships with codecs for them. This includes formats such as avi, mkv, mp4, mov, wmv, divx, mpeg, flv, or mp3. In addition to support for these formats, it supports CD and DVDs that you can play using the program as well.

An optional uncommon codecs package was offered previously for the player but that is not offered anymore.

You can play video or audio files by dragging and dropping them into the player interface. Alternatively, you may use the open menu to load local files, discs, net, entire directories, playlists or urls.

This means that most forms of playbacks that you will encounter, with the exception of casting, is supported by the program.

Preferences

If this is your first time using the media player, you may want to check out the options to configure some settings there.

The preferences may overwhelm you at first as they provide you with a truckload of options.Open the preferences with the shortcut Ctrl-P, or by selecting Options > Preferences.

Here is a quick selection of the most important ones:

• General > Multimedia Engine enables you to switch between MPlayer or mpv as the media player used by SMPlayer.
• General > Remember settings for all files will remember subtitles, audio tracks, and the position the video was stopped the last time.
• Subtitles > Autoload defines the subtitles, if any, that are loaded automatically by the player.
• Interface provides you with options to change the gui, icon set and style. Other options there include whether you want the player window to be resized automatically based on the resolution of the video, seeking jumps, and how many recent files and urls you want the player to remember.
• Keyboard and mouse displays shortcuts, lets you edit shortcuts, and define mouse and mouse wheel functions. SMPlayer maps different functions to the mouse wheel by default which is different from VLC and many other players which map the volume to the mouse wheel instead.

There is more to it than that. There is an advanced section, and preferences to define updates and network usage.

SMPlayer Functionality

The media player works for the most part just like any other. You have playback controls, can jump to any part of a video right away, or switch between audio tracks and subtitles easily.

But there is functionality that is less common, and it makes sense to look at it more closely.

A-B Markers

Set two markers at different positions of a video, and enable repeat, to play this part over and over again without having to play the whole movie or seeking to the right position all the time.

Playback Speed

You can change the playback speed of media using the Play > Speed menu or by using shortcuts. This can be useful to speed up or slow down playback of video or audio files.

Zoom, Aspect Ratio, Size, and more

SMPlayer offers plenty of options when it comes to manipulation of the play area. You may zoom in and out, change aspect ratio or size of the window, or rotate the screen.

Other features include filters, a mirror mode, Stereo 3D filter, and a compact mode. All options are listed in the video menu, and accessible from the right-click menu and keyboard shortcuts.

YouTube Browser and player

You need to download the component separately but it integrates with SMPlayer afterwards. Basically, what you get is a search component that returns videos hosted on YouTube, and an option to play these videos using SMPlayer.

How I use SMPlayer

I use the media player as a secondary player on Windows machines -- the first is VLC Media Player -- as it players some formats, some large WMV files for instance, better than VLC.

In addition, I like the YouTube player it ships with, and that it remembers the playback position so that you start there if you reload the video at a later point in time.

Verdict

SMPlayer is a powerful media player for the Windows operating system and Linux. It is open source, and on Windows available as a portable version.

The player plays nearly any video or audio format you throw at it out of the box, and supports many other features that provide you with options to change playback in one way or another, or use extra features like the ones mentioned previously in the review.

What's new in SMPlayer 16.4?

• The Windows installer includes mpv now so that you can switch between moth engines right away.
• You can load VLC's keyboard and mouse shortcuts profile if you prefer that.
  
  
  Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2016/04/02/smplayer-review/