How to copy PDF text?

muffler

Apologies if this is the wrong forum -.mods, feel free to move it if necessary.

Can anyone tell me how I can copy text from a PDF (Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Document) to a word document.

Thanks in advance

irlrobins

Copy and paste as normal. (Highlight, right click, copy to clipboard, paste in word)

However, some pdf's can be protected to prevent you copying and pasting it's contents. You can even prevent someone printing the file. So perhaps this is the case here.

muffler

Thanks for the reply irlrobins.

Im still struggling a wee bit with this. Got it copied to the clipboard alright but couldnt get past that stage. There was an option for saving a text copy I think but it was in notepad format (or similar). I was able to copy and paste from that to a word doc.

Its a long process though especially as the clipboard seems to loose any previously copied text.

Edit: sorry, forgot to mention - whatever the opposite to a PC buff is - well thats me

Col_Loki

You will need a converter to sort you out, i cant for the life of me remember the one i used but i know i googled "pdf to word converter" and it was one of those links (free also).

Sorry i cant be of more help, but you definitely have to convert it before you are allowed edit it(unless you get the expensive adobe software).

Shifty

might be a bit long winded but if you have a scanner that allows you edit scanned text, then print the document and scan it back in you would be able to edit the document then.

DanGerMus

You could try print screen for the above rather that scanning and just edit that file if it's possible. If your just tryin to copy directly with out editing Print screen should do it. Then paste it as a bmp or jpeg

muffler

Thanks lads for the replies.

I've downloaded one of the trial converters and will get cracking on that in the morning. Im sure if I search around enough I will get a full version somewhere.(free;) )

In relation to editing the scanned text etc I have a mate who may be able to help out in that dept.

thanks again

irlrobins

muffler wrote:

Im still struggling a wee bit with this. Got it copied to the clipboard alright but couldnt get past that stage. There was an option for saving a text copy I think but it was in notepad format (or similar). I was able to copy and paste from that to a word doc.

Tell us exactly what you're doing, because if you copied it to the clipboard it should be as easy as opening word, create a new document and then pasting it into the document. (Using ctrl+v, right click and paste, or Edit->Paste)

Not sure where you're getting the option to save as a text file

saltie

This is pretty straight forward. If you have version 7.0 or higher of adobe look for the hand icon in the toolbar, beside that should be a button which says "Select" - click on that - copy and paste as normal then. Hope this helps

carpediem

Hi guys,

I had the same problem a while back. I was able to copy the text from the PDF, however, when I went to paste the text into Word, the formatting was not retained. It was a 58 page document with lots of charts and tables - none of the formatting was retained. Never got it to work.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

H2G2

carpediem wrote:

...when I went to paste the text into Word, the formatting was not retained

To be expected, as it will paste as plaintext. AFAIK you can't cut & past from PDF and retain the formatting. If I need to, I just cut & paste one per at a time and redo formatting, but its very time consuming. Maybe converters to the job as Col_Loki says, but probably will require work anyway.