Open Office PDF Import Extension

Sun's PDF Import Extension for Open Office 3 and Star Office 9 adds pdf support to both office programs. The extension is currently labeled beta meaning that it does not provide full PDF support yet but can very well be used to edit small portions of a pdf document. Native PDF forms are not yet supported.

The PDF document will be imported into Draw and Impress to preserve the layout of the documents. This naturally means that Draw and Impress have to be installed to work with the PDF Import Extension. Plans are to concentrate on editing capabilities in the next development step concentrating on Writer. Just keep in mind that the current version of the PDF Import Extension supports layout and not editing.

PDF documents can be imported using the Open file dialog. Import takes relatively long but the results are surprisingly good for a beta. One interesting feature of the extension is the option to create hybrid documents that consists of a pdf and odf part. Users with Open Office installed will open the ODF version of the document while users without will load the pdf part.

Open Office users that work with PDF documents from time to timeshould pay close attention to the development of the PDF Import Extension.

Update: The Open Office PDF import extension is still available for download on the official Open Office website. It is available for all supported operating systems. Please note that it has not been updated for a while now, the latest update dates back to 2010.

The extension does not seem compatible with the latest Open Office version anymore (OO 3.4 at the time of writing). Any attempt to install the pdf extension in Open Office 3.4 results in an error message.

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