Best Mac App For Searching For Text In Word Docs
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- Best Mac App For Searching For Text In Word Docs Won't
- Best Mac App For Searching For Text In Word Docs Free
- Printing hidden text in Word requires heading into the options section of the Print dialog. When you go to File and then Print, click on Page Setup at the bottom. In the Page Setup dialog, click on the Paper tab and then click on Print Options.
- Download Writer - Best Word Processor for macOS 10.11 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. Document Writer is a beautiful, easy-to-use text editor that is designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable.
- Mar 19, 2012 Search for apps, articles. Windows Android Mac iPhone PWA Web Apps Windows Phone BlackBerry. (meaning it will open and edit Word, Powerpoint documents etc). Best of all, its absolutely free to use. Download OpenOffice. Text Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, Database, and Formula.
Openoffice.org Word Processor for Mac is one monster software you should have in your computer already. In my humble opinion, I’ll like to affirm that it is the best free Word Processor for Mac. You can’t have a complete list of top 5 best Word Processors for Mac without mentioning openoffice.org Word Processor, let alone a top 11 list.
Windows has a few good word processors available, but when it comes to the majority of users, the free LibreOffice should serve any word processing needs you have.
LibreOffice Writer
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux
Price: Free
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Features
- A familiar interface for anyone that's used a word processor, featuring basic formatting like font, bold/underline/italics, tables, bulleted lists, and more
- Compatible with all major file formats, such as Microsoft Word DOC and DOCX, RTF, ODT, and more
- While-you-type auto-completion, auto-formatting, and automatic spell checking
- Easily move toolbars around and tweak the interface to your liking
- Tons of advanced options that let you customize how LibreOffice works
Where It Excels
LibreOffice's biggest advantage, of course, is that it's completely free. While lots of office suites like Microsoft Office are advanced, they also cost a lot of money. LibreOffice does a great job of being a Microsoft Word 'clone' without the $120 price tag. Anyone who has used Word can immediately jump into LibreOffice and should be able to find everything pretty easily—all the toolbars look pretty similar, the menus are familiar, and it can read and edit Office documents like a champ without causing any formatting issues in Word. When it comes to word processing, LibreOffice Writer has everything most users could ever need, and at an impossible-to-beat price.
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Where It Falls Short
LibreOffice is slow. I mean really slow. Starting it up for the first time on my laptop (which, for what it's worth, has a super fast SSD in it) still takes a good 20 seconds. Once you get into it, it isn't so bad, but that startup time can be pretty annoying. The interface also isn't the prettiest, and the menus can be a bit more confusing at times, especially if you delve into its deeper options (though the options inside are plentiful). Writer also doesn't have some of the smaller, more convenient features that Word has, like a word counter at the bottom of the window, which can throw some people off who are more advanced word processors.
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The Competition
Microsoft Word is the most obvious competitor to LibreOffice. As I said above, Word is a bit more polished and has a few smaller features that, if you've become reliant on them, will throw you off in LibreOffice. If all you're doing is word processing (that is, you don't use spreadsheets or create presentations) Microsoft Office isn't really worth the $120 price tag—but if you have the money to blow and you just need those Word-specific features, Word is obviously where you'll have to get them. In addition, if you are a student (or somehow have access to student discounts), you can get it for a lot cheaper, where it becomes much more worth the cost. For a bigger explanation of the differences between Microsoft Office and LibreOffice, check out our comparison.
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Read more ReadWordPad is a simple word processor that comes free with Windows. It solves LibreOffice's biggest problem—slowness—since it's so lightweight and fast. However, that light weight comes at a big price in features. WordPad is extremely simple, almost to the point where I'm hesitant to call it a word processor. It can do basic text editing and formatting, but if you're looking to add a header to your pages, use a template, or even check your spelling, WordPad won't be able to help you. If you need something quick and simple, though, WordPad is a great alternative.
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Google Docs is also a bit simpler than most people might like, but it has some incredible collaboration features that make it perfect for working with other people on a document. Plus, you can access your documents from anywhere, no Dropbox-like file syncing program required, which is fantastic if you jump from computer to computer.
Lastly, if you're looking for a distraction-free writing tool, the free Q10 does a good job of making you focus without skimping on word processing features. It's more geared toward writers, so it has the advanced features they'd want—like word counts, page counts, a spell checker, an alarm, and stuff like that—but it doesn't have a lot of the extra formatting tools you'll find in a normal word processor. This is our 'left field' pick for word processor, since it isn't a word processor in the strictly traditional sense—but it's worth a look if that's what you're using word processors for.
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Read more ReadThere certainly other good word processors out there, but these are our go-to picks. If you have a favorite we didn't mention, share it with us in the comments.
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Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
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The PDF (Portable Document Format) is the open standard, created by Adobe in the 1990s, for presenting documents so they look consistent across all platforms and software. DOC (or DOCX) is the format/file extension used mainly by Microsoft Office for its word processing documents. The two aren't anywhere near compatible.
The problem is that you can't open a DOC file with Adobe Reader (or any other free PDF reader like FoxIt and Sumatra). But in order to convert PDFs to Word format—which really just means editing a a PDF in Word—the related process is easy.
As of Word 2013 (released in 2012), Microsoft has offered a function called PDF Reflow. It does what you expect. In Word, you go to the File tab, select open, select any PDF File, and open it right up for editing, as if it was a Word DOCX file.
There are limitations, however. The PDF you open in Word will have all the content, but it probably won't look exactly right. That's because PDFs are 'fixed'—while the data is there, the file doesn't store the relationship between the data (such as the position on the page). Word documents are all about exacting that placement.
Here's a list from Microsoft of exactly what may not convert just right:
- Tables with cell spacing
- Page colors and page borders
- Tracked changes
- Frames
- Footnotes that span more than one page
- Endnotes
- Audio, video, and PDF active elements
- PDF bookmarks
- PDF tags
- PDF comments
- Font effects, like Glow or Shadow (in the Word file, the effects are represented by graphics)
When you open a PDF in Word, you'll get this warning:
'Word will now convert your PDF to an editable Word document,' it says. 'This may take a while. The resulting Word document will be optimized to allow you to edit the text, so it might not look exactly like the original PDF, especially if the original file contained a lot of graphics.'
That said, the graphics get pulled in; they are easily editable as well.
Saving a file from Word 2013 to PDF is as simple as doing a Save as from the File tab. You should check the boxes on the save dialog box that say 'Open File After Publishing' to immediately view it.
Conversion also works in Word Online, found at Office Online. You open a PDF in Word Online and it's viewable, but click the 'Edit in Word' link and you'll see this:
That's followed by another warning about changes to the layout, etc. But the content will be there and editable, even if the look went wonky. Give it a try.
That's it, you're all set for using PDFs in Word. Unless you have an older version of Microsoft Word.
PDF Use With Older Versions of Word
You're out of luck trying to open a PDF directly in Word 2010 or earlier. You'll need to convert the file first.
App For Searching For Items
The ways to do this are numerous. Sites like Nitro's Converter will easily do a one-at-a-time conversion in either direction and email you the result. Of course, Nitro would prefer to sell you some software, which is handy if you've got hundreds or thousands of PDFs that need conversion.
Best Mac App For Searching For Text In Word Docs Won't
Others include: Word.net, which has similar features; doc2pdf, arguably the best looking site that converts PDFs to Word and back; PDFPro's option to convert up to three PDF files to Word a month; and PDF Converter, which also converts PDF to Excel, PowerPoint, or an image, or vice versa. In fact, you can email any attachment to pdf@freepdfconvert.com and get a PDF.
For desktop software—which is the fastest way to turn a PDF into a Word DOC—there is no lack of options. PDFMate or WPS Office's Converter are great options for Windows users. If you're on a Mac, there are Lighten or iPubsoft, but each only has a free trial, so they're not totally free.
Smallpdf sells a $99 Windows tool called Solid PDF Converter that does a lot more than just Word output, plus handles batch conversions and OCR to make scans into editable text; it also offers a $6 per month service to make unlimited conversions online.
Ultimately, however, Word makes a pretty terrible editor for PDF files. You're going to be much better off finding a full PDF editor, and you don't have to pay the big cost of getting Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.
FoxIt PhantomPDF, for example, is $109;
Export a PDF to JPEG or other image format
If you need to convert a PDF into an image file, it's going to be a whole lot easier on a Mac than it would be with a PC. On a Mac, simply open the PDF in Preview. Use the File > Export menu and select the image format you want and the options you prefer, and you've got your image file.
On Windows, the best no-cost method is to open a free Adobe account and log in to https://cloud.acrobat.com/exportpdf. Drag a PDF into the window; from the Convert To: menu, select Image, then Image Format (JPEG, PNG, or TIFF), and use the slider to select the image quality. Multipage PDFs get converted into separate image files. You can then download a ZIP with the image files.
Best Mac App For Searching For Text In Word Docs Free
If you're bothered by privacy concerns and don't want to share your data with Adobe, then you can use many image editors to export PDF to image files. Our favorite is XnViewMP (www.xnview.com), free for personal and educational use. When you open a PDF in XnViewMP, you'll probably need to follow the prompts to install the open-source GhostScript app for working with PDF and PostScript files, but you can then use XnViewMP to export a PDF to any standard image format. Keep in mind that all fonts will be converted from scalable TrueType format into bitmap, and small text will look 'block-y.'
If you want fine-tuned export options, any commercial PDF editor can export to image files. 0017We've used FineReader, Acrobat, and PDF-Xchange Editor with excellent results—including options to create small files suitable for display on the web, insert into documents, or use anywhere else where PDFs aren't supported or convenient.
