Can I force Acrobat to remove formatting and images from text?

I'm trying to get usable text out of an old, scanned document. I'm using Acrobat Pro DC to generate text to use in Word for Mac 2011. Current version of Acrobat and Word, OSX 10.10.3
If I use the Export function, I get a document filled with weird carriage returns and section breaks, random marks saved as images, and odd font choices.
Is there some way to force Acrobat to give me unformatted text, no section breaks, one font with standard line and word spacing, no images, no columns? I know that will cause problems that I need to fix, but I suspect it will be fewer problems than I'm having the way it works now. If there is some other way to fix this problem, I'd be grateful for suggestions. But the source document has simple formatting, and Adobe keeps guessing complex formatting stuff that isn't there.
Thanks very much,
/s/ Rankin Johnson IV

Rankin Johnson