How to convert chm to doc/pdf

Question

I want to know how I can convert a chm file into a doc (or alternatively a searchable pdf).

After trying the online services as well as Calibre without luck.

I am using windows 7.

Answer 1

This is a quick-and-hacky way of doing things.

At the heart of it, .chm files are similar to ZIP archives, and they can be opened with 7-Zip. Once you've extracted the contents of your help archive, you can pick out the HTML files you want to include in your final PDF.

If you want to convert them into individual PDFs then you're almost done; just Print to PDF if you have a PDF converter tool already installed, otherwise use an online tool.

If you want to combine multiple pages into one big PDF, you can either use your PDF printer's tools to save to an existing PDF with the Append option, or if you don't have this option, you can combine the HTML files into one big HTML file by opening a command prompt, going to the folder you've extracted, and using this command:

type *.html > everything.html

The resultant file is technically not valid HTML, but most browsers will render it just fine. Want to omit some pages or change the ordering? Just delete them or rename them before running the above command.