During October we wrote about creating PDFs in Microsoft Word, today we are going to talk about opening and editing PDF documents in Word.

Opening PDFs in Word is a simple process, however it is a little messy!

• Open the PDF document in Adobe Reader
• Select all of the text on the PDF by pressing Ctrl+A or Edit -> Select All
• Copy the text in the PDF by pressing Ctrl+C or Edit -> Copy
• Paste the text into Microsoft Word by pressing Ctrl+P or Edit -> Paste

You will now have all of the text from the PDF in Microsoft Word, however it will be unformatted.

To get any images from the PDF document you will have to use a slightly more complicated tool.

• Select Tools -> Select & Zoom -> Snapshot Tool
• Use the Snapshot Tool to select the image you wish to copy by dragging the mouse over it
• Once you release the mouse the image will be on the keyboard
• To paste the image into Microsoft Word press Ctrl+P or select Edit -> Paste from the toolbar

Although this is a slightly ugly way of opening PDFs in Word, it is unfortunately the best way for the time being- we’ll keep you updated if anything comes along that looks better.

It is often useful to insert random text into a Word document when setting up the formatting and layout of a document. Microsoft Word has a little-known feature which allows you to do this. Simply type:

=rand()

At the start of a paragraph and Word will automatically insert 3 paragraphs of random text. If you need to specify the number of paragraphs you can use:

=rand( 6 )

(you can replace 6 with as many paragraphs as you require)

The generated text does not look particularly nice so there is an alternative method using Lorem Ipsum, which has been used by designers since around the 1960s. Lorem Ipsum can be generated from the Lipsum Generator website.