Quote:
Originally Posted by vastav
The PDF file had tagging issues - entire chapter was marked as a single paragraph which resulted into the problem described above. Simply deleting the tags from the PDF and letting the ePub converter regenerate tags fixed the issue in ePub conversion.
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Just want to reiterate that first deleting the tags in the PDF document fixed the issue entirely with the pdf2epub conversion. Acrobat can re-generate tags automatically.
A big thank you to vastav for his assistance in solving the issue. He is extremely helpful, courteous, informative, and responsive.
I have to say now that Acrobat + pdf2epub seems to me to be the ideal solution for converting PDFs to epubs at the moment. It’s the quickest, easiest, most flexible and accurate way to do it. First off, pdf2epub can read bookmarks in a PDF ebook to create an accurate and workable metadata TOC. Many PDFs already contain bookmarks but if they don’t, Acrobat lets you automatically create them with one-click from its tags. And if the PDF doesn’t have existing tags you can have Acrobat scan the document to automatically create them too. This doesn’t work for all pdf ebooks. I have one that is so garbled in terms of structure that the auto-generated tags and bookmarks are useless (garbage in, garbage out). But most pdf ebooks I have looked at are pretty clean and usable for auto-generating bookmarks (if they don’t already have them). Second, in the worst case scenario, where you have to manually create bookmarks, Acrobat’s bookmark system is pretty easy to use. I found it much easier and faster to mark sections/chapters this way than in Sigil.
The biggest problem for me with all the other conversion methods I tried was the inaccurate paragraphs breaks. The Acrobat + pdf2epub solution not only is best at producing accurate breaks, but is the easiest way to get a workable metadata TOC at the same time.
Unfortunately Acrobat does cost a lot, but as I mentioned, one might be able to get an older lower-cost copy off of eBay. Or maybe you know someone who has an older copy to spare. If you can’t get it, you can at least go to the pdf2epub website and use their online converter to run your PDFs through. This would at least give you the benefit of accurate paragraph conversions and a workable TOC (if bookmarks already exist). To see if your pdf is already bookmarked, you can open it up in the free Adobe Reader and go to View>Navigation Panels>Bookmarks. You won’t be able to edit bookmarks with the free reader, but it will at least show you if they exist.