Saving pdf document as microsoft word

Question

How do I save a pdf file as a text or Word file if the original file was a scanned jpeg file of a typed page or page from a book? That is, I have a typed manuscript from before the computer era that was never digitally entered as text. Instead of retyping the whole thing, can I scan it and then somehow extract the text so that it can be save and edited as a text or Word file? I've heard it is possible to do this. Adobe's ad pitch for Acrobat 8 Professional seems to claim it can do this but it's not very clear.
It says: "Eliminate the need to rekey information. If you don't have the original file from which a PDF document was created, you can still leverage the text and graphics while preserving formatting and layout....With Adobe® Acrobat® 8 Professional software, you can save a PDF document as a Microsoft Word file and then edit directly in Word. This helps facilitate the reuse of content when you're starting a new project, or when you need to repurpose existing text and graphics for other projects."
Of course, if the pdf file was originally a text or Word file, even Acrobat Reader can do this, simply by hitting the "Save as text" button (though the original formatting may be lost). Is this what Professional means by "leverage the text"? That's useless for me. Or do they mean recognize and extract text from a jpeg file? If Acrobat Professional can do this, can Acrobat Standard also do it? Since this is the only function I really need, I wonder if there's a cheaper way to do it.
I use a PowerBook G4 Mac with OS X 10.4.11 operating system.

Answer 1

OCR means "optical character recognition". When you have a scanned
page, there is no text in it, just a collection of dots which the
human brain can see as letters. Computers aren't as smart as the human
brain in this case, but OCR is the best it can manage: it uses
guesswork to try and find the letters. This sometimes works very well
(good, clean scan of clean first-generation later print), sometimes
very poorly (faxes, things which were ever saved as JPEG, poor scans),
sometimes it is hopeless (handwriting, web graphics).
Anyway, Acrobat can do OCR - see the help. Be sure to read closely
about the options, the default will not help you in this case.
Aandi Inston