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I am using foxit PDF reader to view my text book. I would like to copy the text from the pdf file into a word document but it won't let me. I can select the text fine but the option to copy text is not available. I can copy text from other documents but not some. Is there a way to get around this protection in windows?

3
  • I see my answer doesn't work for you, so you have posted a bounty. If you post somewhere an example of such a pdf, I will have a look at it.
    – harrymc
    Jul 15, 2012 at 10:04
  • @harrymc: Specifically, I was looking to copy the values from table 6.15 of acousticslab.org/papers/VassilakisP2001Dissertation.pdf
    – endolith
    Jul 15, 2012 at 19:48
  • @endolith: See my new answer.
    – harrymc
    Jul 15, 2012 at 21:11

12 Answers 12

49

The pdf file has probably been locked against copying text. Below are two ways to unlock it:

  1. If the pdf has not been locked against printing, you can print it to a virtual pdf printer to create an unlocked file. See this:
    "Remove Password and Unlock Protected PDF Which Allowed To Be Printed Without Knowing Secret".
  2. If the print function has been locked out, see this :
    "Remove Restrictions and Decrypt Password Protected PDF Files With PDF Unlocker".
7
  • You can see if the PDF is locked for copying. From the File menu choose Properties and on the Security tab is says whether Content Copying is allowed. Sep 9, 2015 at 19:40
  • Tried printing the PDF. The printed file does not allow to select text, it seems as it converted text to image.
    – queezz
    Jan 17, 2019 at 3:10
  • @queezz: The PDF must have contained the images to start with.
    – harrymc
    Jan 17, 2019 at 7:35
  • @harrymc Yes, there are images. But text is also converted into images. Google Chrome option works well on the same document.
    – queezz
    Jan 17, 2019 at 8:48
  • 1
    Your first link links to primopdf.com/installers/4.0.1/FreewarePrimo64Setup.exe which is bad it doesn't work and it looks like you never even archived it to archive.org either. Your second link is ok but it links to a file sharing site dfiles.eu/files/7kiqyvswk the file is ok though, checked with virustotal. But not so easy to find as there are various links on that mydigitallife page. It's where it says "PDF Unlocker is a free yet user-friendly tool which can be downloaded via the link here (current version 1.0.4)."
    – barlop
    Apr 15, 2019 at 8:13
44
+100
  1. Open the PDF in Google Chrome(drag and drop PDF file to Chrome).
  2. Print the particular page as PDF or just open print preview.
  3. Now you can copy the text from print preview or output PDF. But I don't think you could copy the table directly.
5
  • 4
    This works for me, too. This is the easiest method I see here.
    – endolith
    Jul 16, 2012 at 14:38
  • 3
    Absolutely brilliant. Oh, you can drag files to Chrome's tab bar to quickly open them, by the way.
    – iono
    Feb 19, 2013 at 6:42
  • 3
    Neither of those methods worked for me in Chrome 53. Has the loophole possibly been closed?
    – Simon E.
    Aug 25, 2016 at 2:42
  • 1
    Worked like a charm on Chrome 95. The Print dialog has an option to Save to PDF as well which kept the text while removing the protection. Adobe's print to Microsoft PDF printed as an image.
    – Lilienthal
    Oct 22, 2021 at 17:59
  • I'm running Chrome ver 111 and the copying is also disabled when viewing in it.
    – Sherman
    Mar 21, 2023 at 22:04
19

I was able to create a DRM-free version of your PDF file using Ghostscript (which is available for Windows).

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=stripped.pdf VassilakisP2001Dissertation.pdf

The resulting file stripped.pdf can be loaded in Adobe Reader, and Reader will happily allow you to copy any part of it you wish. It also preserves most of the formatting of the table.

3
  • 1
    This is brilliant. My tax accountant refuses to give me non-DRM PDFs, nor the password to remove DRM. This solves my problem. Excellent work!
    – kevinarpe
    Apr 28, 2013 at 3:52
  • 2
    If the PDF has a password, make sure to include the -sPDFPassword switch (-sPDFPassword=password).
    – palswim
    Aug 16, 2017 at 23:02
  • You are super. Thanks. May 17, 2020 at 14:33
5

if copy is greyed out, as it now doubt is for you, then the PDF is 'locked', it can be read but is indeed stopping you from copy/pasting anything from it.

This website will unlock a PDF

https://smallpdf.com/unlock-pdf

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  • 2
    this worked while all of the other options above didn't
    – msysmilu
    Feb 8, 2021 at 11:23
2

I was able to copy the table from your PDF file successfully using Okular (for Linux; part of KDE). To do this, I had to go into Okular's settings and uncheck "Obey DRM restrictions."

I'm aware that this doesn't really help you much since you're running Windows, but it is a possibility if you have a Linux machine handy or are willing to install it.

Unfortunately it was plain text with no formatting, but it looks like it shouldn't be too hard to recreate the table. You can see the results of my copy and paste adventure here.

4
  • That's what VirtualBox is for. :D I can also copy the plain text without formatting, but by selecting one column at a time it is pretty easy to export.
    – endolith
    Jul 15, 2012 at 23:19
  • Looks like this is best for tables of numbers, since Okular lets you do rectangular selection of text and extract a single column in order.
    – endolith
    Jul 16, 2012 at 14:42
  • For single columns, probably so. For the whole table, see my other answer. Jul 16, 2012 at 14:44
  • Note that Okular can run on Windows. In fact a lot of KDE software can run on windows.
    – Bakuriu
    Dec 4, 2013 at 19:53
2

This managed to convert basic text. It stuggled with tables though.

http://www.onlineocr.net/documents

1

You can use GT Text is a program that translate images (also pdf snapshots = image) to text. You can select the area and copies it to clipboard It is free

The official home page is http://gttext.googlecode.com

0

If you're just looking for short snippets, you can often type a few words into google inside quote marks and find the exact quote already scanned in some other format or typed by someone else.

Another option is "Document from Photo" in the Google Docs Android app, which will put the text through OCR. This is error-prone, of course.

I wish PDF locking functionality never existed. :(

0

Answer to endolith:

Your PDF is protected against copying, but is not protected against printing.

So I have printed the one page containing table 6.15 into another PDF that is not protected against copying, selected and copied the table, then pasted it into Word. To my great surprise the result of the paste was utter rubbish.

I have now taken a further look at this table and found a very surprising result : This is not a table !

It is actually a montage of small pieces of text, positioned on the page so as to look like a table. But this is not a real table.

The best you can do is either rewrite the whole thing as a table, or just use in your work a screenshot of this table-like assembled text.

Here is my screenshot of the table, as taken from my generated one-page pdf document :

image

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  • I tried to print it with 2 programs but all I got was a blank page.
    – endolith
    Jul 15, 2012 at 22:56
  • Using Foxit Reader, I positioned myself on the page, then printed the current page to a pdf printer (I used Cute Pdf Writer). I will try to analyze the problem with copying the table this evening,
    – harrymc
    Jul 16, 2012 at 5:48
  • I tried PrimoPDF and qvPDF (which uses GhostScript)
    – endolith
    Jul 16, 2012 at 14:33
  • See my above addition.
    – harrymc
    Jul 17, 2012 at 8:07
  • ...I also uploaded my one-page pdf to here (60 seconds wait time).
    – harrymc
    Jul 17, 2012 at 8:12
0

Another possibility is Evince.

In Windows, it seems to support copying by default.

In Linux, copying can be enabled by checking the override_restrictions setting if it isn't already, following these directions (dconf-editor/org/gnome/evinceoverride_restrictions).

0

Yes, you can use DocDocGoose, an open source web app, to remove copy, edit, and highlight restrictions from your document, even without the original password used to set those restrictions. No need to download or install any additional software.

Since the processing takes place in your browser, it might take some time if your PDF is a large one.

Disclaimer: I am the author DocDocGoose.

0

I've found a much easier solution: open the PDF with Firefox integrated PDF reader and just copy the text! ;) (at least it worked for me with Firefox 108.0.1)

Blocking Copy content is just trick naive people and annoy others, not to actually protect content...

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