I like the fact there is no cost for the openoffice but it is not as easy to understand for me. I found two that have free 30 day trials that worked perfectly --- if only i could afford to purchase. ( BluBeam Revu and Adobe Acrobat XI pro) both were so simple to make changes to pdf - create pdf- etc.

I wonder if anyone else is seeing this: For some PDFs the import works great, modifications can be made to the PDF, the export produces a new PDF with changes and everything is perfect.

But I have some cases where I import a PDF [all of mine are single page PDFs] (i.e. Open it), make no changes at all, export with all defaults on the PDF export properties page, and save as a new PDF file. When I open that file in a recent copy of Acrobat the modifications appear just where you'd expect them but the image the the importer produces from the PDF has been shifted either right to the bottom of the page or all the way off!

If I then open the PDF back up in Draw I can see the original PDF content but it is, indeed, shifted down off the page. I can actually grab it and drag it back up to the top of the page!

This doesn't happen on all computers and only for some PDFs--I haven't found the common properties that determine the outcome.

Otherwise, this extension is great and I can use it on OO 3.2 or 3.4 and on Windows 7.

Hello,
I installed this extension for OO on my iMac i5, running OSX 10.6.8, and at first everything seems to work perfect.
But if I'm trying to import a PDF-File (with embedded fonts!) in a OO-Doc, the placed PDF looks completely different. The text lines are shifted, letters are expanded .... OO (... or the plugin) converts each text-line to a separate text-frame and changed it completely. Thats not only a problem of displaying on the screen, it looks also disorderd on the print ....

I deleted it and reinstalled the plugin - nothing changes.

On a MAC the plugin did not work!

Okay...This is a LONG comment with a lot of steps, but if you read and follow it carefully you should be able to use this extension on a Mac with no problems. These steps worked great for me.

IMPORTANT: I don't frequent this site, so if you run into problems, just go through the steps again. The most important thing is doing Step 7 correctly so that the extension is placed in the correct folder.

I'm running the OpenOffice.org.app version 3.4.1 on OSX Mountain Lion.

Here's how I get this extension to work.
1. Download the oracle-pdfimport.otx file to any location (I downloaded it to my Downloads folder).
2. Open Finder, on the left side of the Finder window click 'Applications', and locate OpenOffice.org.app (but don't open it -- i.e. don't double-click it).
3. Single-click the OpenOffice.org.app to highlight it. Next (and here's the important part) hold down 'control' key at the bottom left of your keyboard, and while holding down the 'control' key click on your trackpad --> this will bring up a context menu --> from this context menu click 'Show Package Contents'.
4. You will now see all the folders and files that are used by the OpenOffice.org.app. BE VERY CAREFUL IN THIS STEP not to accidentally move or delete any of these folders or files...the app needs them all.
5. Continuing from Step 4, in the Finder window you will see a folder named 'Contents'. Click the arrow to the left of the 'Contents' to expand it and see the folders and files contained within it. After you've expanded the 'Contents' folder, immediately beneath it you'll see a folder named 'share' --> click the arrow beside 'share' to expand this folder. Under 'share' you will see a folder named 'extensions' --> click the arrow beside 'extensions' to expand it. Lastly, there is a folder under 'extensions' named 'install' --> click the arrow beside 'install' to expand it.
6. Continuing from Step 5, inside the 'install' folder you will probably see a file named 'dict-en.oxt' that automatically installs with OpenOffice. This 'dict-en.oxt' file has a file icon that looks like a puzzle piece (apparently that's the icon OpenOffice chose to use for extension files).
7. Now look at the Finder menu bar at the top of your Mac's screen. Click 'File', then click 'New Window'. This will cause a new Finder window to open. Now you have 2 Finder windows open: 1 window that has the contents of your OpenOffice.org.app, and the new window you just opened. Move (drag) each of these 2 Finder windows so that you can see both at the same time on your Mac's screen. Now, in the new Finder window you opened, navigate to the folder where you downloaded the PDF extension file named oracle-pdfimport.otx (in my case, since I saved it to my 'Downloads' folder, on the left side of the Finder window I click my name -- it has a little icon beside it that looks like a house -- then to the right of that I find and click on my 'Downloads' folder, then I scroll through the files in that folder and find the one named oracle-pdfimport.otx. Single-click on the oracle-pdfimport.otx file and drag it over to the other Finder window from Step 3 which shows the contents of the OpenOffice.org.app folders and files. Drag the oracle-pdfimport.otx file into the 'install' folder from Steps 5 and 6 and drop it into that folder. You should now see at least 2 files in your 'install' folder; both files will have the icon that looks like a puzzle piece. 1 file will be the dict-en.oxt that was mentioned in Step 6, and the other file will be the oracle-pdfimport.otx that you just dragged into that folder.
8. Once you've verified that the oracle-pdfimport.otx file got dropped into your 'install' folder, close the 2 Finder windows you opened. This is just for safety, since you don't want to muck around any further in the window that shows the package contents of the OpenOffice.org.app.
9. Whew! Now you're done. Because you placed the oracle-pdfimport.otx inside your 'install' folder, the next time you open the OpenOffice.org.app, the oracle-pdfimport.otx extension file will automatically load and be ready to use. Since the new extension automatically loads when the app starts up, you don't have to do anything after the OpenOffice.org.app opens to enable the extension. It's already loaded and ready to go!
9. Now to test the extension. After you've completed all of the above steps, start the OpenOffice app from your 'Applications' folder, and when it loads, click the 'Open' button on the start-up screen and navigate to a wherever you have a PDF file stored on your Mac. (If it's an important PDF file, be sure to make a copy of it before you open it.) When the PDF file opens inside the OpenOffice app, whatever text or image you click on will display a box around it; you can choose to either click somewhere inside the box to edit its text, or you can hover your mouse around the box until the cursor changes to a hand and then you can use the hand to drag the 'boxed' text or image to any place you like inside the PDF document. That's about it. From there, you just have to play around with it to see how you can edit text and move things to your liking. When you're done playing with a file, you can choose to save it or discard the changes you've made.

Thanks for this great extension - it's really helping me out! :)

Is it possible to read annotations (markup) made using Okular 0.15.2 (embedded in the PDF file and can be read by other applications)?

When I open a marked-up PDF in OOO the markup is not to be seen.

I'm running OOO 3.4.1 under Mint 11 LXDE if that matters.

All the best,
Pete.

Follow-Up... any similar extensions elsewhere?

Sunclad
10/30/2012 at 5:56 PM Eastern USA Time

It's simply superb. I edited a 498 page pdf doc with this. It didn't mess up the formatting even a bit.
Open the pdf file with Open Office Draw.
Select the page from the thumbnails on the left.
Edit the text or graphic.
Export as pdf.

Great work Oracle. Thanks a lot.

Use abiword it is more effiecent and it has a built in pdf generator and a pdf writer BUILT IN!!!!

I need to fill out forms downloaded as PDF files. Dont want to spend $$$ getting Acrobat or MS Office suite, so I downloaded the Oracle PDF Import Extension. I am running OO 3.2 on XP. The files open in a small unreadable format in Draw, and wont edit (fill out the forms). Tried to tweak OO for several days but just wont work, and often the computer freezes. As many governments use OO and filling out forms is huge in governments, how to do this? Has Microsoft booby trapped Windowswith so called "updates" to force users to buy $$ Office and Official Microsoft partner $$Acrobat? If so how to jailbreak? Should I delete all traces/breadcrumbs of Microsoft Office (so called "free trial" expired way back)?

I'm being told I need "stlport_vc7145.dll" to run the extension. Can someone tell me what that is and where to find it? Thank you

I open a PDF document with draw. The only way I can find to add text is to use a text box. This seems not the most optimum way to edit the document. If I am doing something wrong please let me know the right way to do this.

So, something which should have taken few seconds / minutes took over an hour. I must be damned stupid and maybe I am not alone from what can be seen.

Now: Once you download the extension, double click and accept it will be installed without telling you anything such as The extension has nbeen successively installed or alike (you are supposed to know aren't you?)

No! if you launch draw and expect to see an import button, forget about it.

No, If you expect launching Draw and nicely asking it to open the pdf, forget about it.

No! If you expect asking Draw to open the pdf it will prompt you on how to interpret it.

And yes! If you ask draw to open your poor pdf but, before you specify in the open dialog, right little box that you want to open a pdf (and not "all" or whatever) then bingo!

I hope It did save some time to other as stupid as me - Are there any?

And don't ask the acrobatics I need to make in order to register and add my comments

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, however one thing that's worked for me is that I installed CutePDF Writer (on Windows) and I reprinted the PDF from Acrobat Reader to the CutePDF Writer (which is set as a printer in the Print dialogue). This of course just re-creates the PDF using CutePDF Writer, but for whatever reason, this re-created PDF renders correctly in OO Draw, where the original PDF didn't. Using this method I've been able to edit PDFs just fine.

I am a fairly new Mac user with OS X 10.6. For several months, I have been trying to find something which would edit pdf files better than Preview does (for example, the content of a text box in Preview can only be "center aligned"). Skim and FormulatePro were two options I tried that were improvements over Preview in many respects, but wouldn't let me paste an image onto my pdf (such as, for example, if I wanted to put my digital signature on a document).

Then, I "discovered" the Oracle PDF Import Extension which I had installed in Open Office months ago, but hadn't really used. By "discovered," I mean I read on somebody's blog that you could use Open Office Draw to edit pdf files and I thought, "Hey, I wonder if that would work with my setup." (Boy, do I feel stupid.)

I have just started using this functionality, but in just an hour or so of playing around, I have found that it has far exceeded my expectations and, even, my immediate needs. Besides giving you (a) all the control over text and text boxes that you would expect from, say, a word processing program and (b) allowing you to paste images onto your pdf, Open Office Draw also includes layers!

The layer function threw me off for a bit, because, at first, I kept finding that my attempts to edit the document resulted in grabbing the raster image and moving it "off" of the underlying text layer (a function, I will admit, that I think will be worth exploiting someday, but wasn't what I was looking for at the moment). Then, I discovered that you can "lock" the layer so as to prevent this annoying occurrence. To create your edits, simply create a new layer (call it "MyEdits" or whatever you want) and you're in business.

Anybody who has done anything more than drawn a couple of lines and boxes on a page has discovered that editing the overlapping objects can be a real pain - if not an outright impossibility. Separating these overlapping objects through the use of different layers solves the problem.

The only downside to the use of Open Office Draw as a pdf editing tool that I can see is that you must import the pdf, save your edits in odg format, and then export it to pdf when you're done. I know that we would all like to have the capability of doing everything I just described directly to the native document, but, hey, for all the functionality I have been searching the internet for weeks to find, I think it's a reasonable trade off.

PDF-Import lässt sich nicht installieren.
Bekomme immer diese Fehlermeldung:
Dieser Mediatyp wird nicht unterstützt: application/vnd.sun-star.package-bundle 1.0.40

Ich benutze die Version 3.2.1

To those for whom the extension opens the PDF headers, the bug report is here:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=116123
Please comment there so the issue can be resolved. Thanks!

For reference, the PDF headers look something like this:
%PDF-1.4
%����
8 0 obj
<<
/Type/Annot
/Subtype/Link
/Border[0 0 0]
/C[0 1 1]
/A<<
/S/URI


After reading some of the comments already submitted regarding this extension, I was a little apprehensive about trying it. But, I needed to modify a .pdf, under a time constraint, an expired acrobat reader and not wanting to spend money on a .pdf modifying program. After downloading the extension I ran into the same problem noted by some of the commenters; clicking on the .pdf file launched Oo writer with unusable text. No where in the download instructions does it tell you to first click on the extension in order to launch it previous to launching the .pdf. Once I properly installed the extension then chose to open the .pdf using Oo draw, then I was able to modify the document. I agree with previous comments, it is clunky but for the few modifications that I had to do it did the trick so I can't complain. A suggestion would be to include download instructions with the extension so that launching would be successful.

OO has long served as my primary word processor and document editor. Thanks!!
I'd love to edit .pdf with OO. I keep trying the PDF Import Extension; just tried it again, after fresh install of OO 3.2.1 on 64 bit Windows 7. It still can't open a simple seeming .pdf (no pictures, nothing embeded, just a 2 page static mostly text document).
Suggestions?

Hello,
I have OO 3.2.1 and I believed I installed the plugin correctly though I have not been able to find out how to determine what plugins and what versions of them I have installed. Any help on that last part?

I have tried to open a pdf 6 times and it takes forever or OO stops responding. Whenever it has opened the formatting is all wrong with all the spaces between words deleted.

Windows 7 is the OS.

I am wondering if this extension is 64-bit compatible?

Thanks in advance for any help.