I'll agree with Howard K that Adobe does it best. We don't have the high priced versions that do everything; but have the "Adobe Basic" which meets our needs. ((It's not free.))

In partial reply to Richard Bridge - a PDF file records only how a document appears when printed. The same document could be printed identically from many different programs, and the PDF file doesn't care or know where the original document came from. All it knows, and the only information it contains, is where the dots are.

There are "converter" programs that can produce a Word document, or another program might produce a Wordperfect document, or an Excel spreadsheet, or a Project or Power Point presentation – all from the same PDF document. None of these is likely to closely resemble the original "document" that produced the input to the PDF creation.

Most such programs, so far as ones I've seen, work badly; although they may be good enough for some uses. You can copy the text and images from most PDF files and paste them into any program you wish, and do about as good a job as most of the converters I've looked at. There probably are better ones around; but I'd expect them to be more expensive than what I've checked.

John