I was given a lecture that I wish to modify by the author of that lecture. Although originally done in .ppt format, due to a computer crash the original format no longer exists. What can I do so that I may modify the content? Is there any program that can restore the original format?
Depends on how the pdf was created. If it was created by simply scanning a hard copy of the ppt presentation, you’re up the creek without a paddle.
If it was created directly from the ppt presentation, you have some options. You can save the pdf as either a text file, in which case you’ll at least recover the text of the document, or as a Word document, in which case you’ll get the text and graphic images and (maybe) charts or other stuff created by PowerPoint.
Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no way to just turn the pdf back into a PowerPoint presentation.
There are numerous programs that claim to do so. Most have to be paid for, and while I have no problem doing that, I do not want to until I have heard that one of them works well.
What would happen if I printed it to cute .pdf?
If the PDF was saved from the original file then you should be able to cut and paste the text and images directly into a new Power Point file, although the original formatting will be lost.
I just tried this out on my computer, and the two things that don’t copy over are background images and graphs. Background images probably aren’t a big deal. For graphs I’d probably just take a screen shot of the PDF and add the image to the Power Point. If you need to be able to edit the graph you’d probably have to recreate it, though.
I don’t have Adobe Acrobat on my home computer so I can’t test this, but if you have access to Acrobat you should be able to save a PDF as a series of image files or as an HTML file. Power Point can open HTML files, so you may get something from doing it that way. I have not idea what this would do to the formatting, though.