MS Publisher pdf to spot color press

I have clients that keep bringing in supposed press-ready documents created by MS publisher and want them printed on a two color press! The Publisher document is converted to pdf on a PC and then sent to me on a Mac using CS3 to prepare for press.  What is the right way to deal with this???  I have tried spot channels in Photoshop (not good for body copy) and cutting and pasting to layers that I  convert all to black and turn on and off in Illustrator but there seems to be no way around the pixelation--the press operator always complains about the dot pattern instead of clean text.  (We also often have font issues I'd welcome tips on--will Publisher even convert to outline?)   I don't know if Illustrator is the right forum/software but it seems the best option when opening most pdfs for press without rasterizing the text.

You should chareg them for all your time doing additoanl work to make these press ready.
You can open a  PDF in Illustrator and if they saved this as press ready then you should get alot of useful vector paths. Editing PDFs in Illustrator can be a time consuming nightmare, as you may have to rebuild drop shadows or get really complex groupings to sift through.
You may have more luck posting on a MS Publisher forum, but ofcourse let your client know that working with a low end software LIke SM Pub can save them money on software cost, but if they do a lot of this then they will pay more in the end for prepress production.
My sympathies go to you for the nastiness, but alteast you may get alot of billableel work form this.

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