OT: Converting .pdf to .doc or .txt

[Ragnarok-X]

Frankly, i want to send some ebooks (.pdf) to work using my email-adress at work. However, instead of sending large noticable chunks, i would like to send a chapter a day or something like that. So i need a tool that can break up pdfs into .txt or .doc. Even one big .txt or .doc would help me, because i could manually cut out one chapter after another. Funnily the acrobat has an option to output as .txt, but whenever i try that i get a blank file.

Any ideas or suggestions ?

[Suicide Junkie]

If you can't save as text, it may be just a picture for the whole page.

[geoschmo]

Acrobat has a text select tool, but you can configure the pdf when you create it so that the text select tool does not work. If outputting to txt is giving you a blank file then that probably means they have done this. It's a rudimentary copy protection feature for ebook publishers.

You could get a print to pdf driver, there are a few free ones out there, and "print" a few pages at a time of the original into smaller pdfs.

If nothing else works, you could zip the pdf and break it up into volumes. The downside to this of course is you won't be able to read any of it until you get all the parts at work and put back together. But it would get around the big file problem.

[Suicide Junkie]

How about a rewritable CD?
Or just collect a whole bunch of books and burn them all to a regular CD?

[AgentZero]

Or a thumb drive. It's far more common for an office computer to have USB ports than it is for them to have CD-rewriters. Just make sure to subtly check out what your company policy is on USB drives, since a lot of places are quite finiky about what they let you hook up to their computers.

[Suicide Junkie]

You don't need a rewriter to read it.
Don't they let you bring in music CDs?