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8

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?

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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 '12 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 '12 at 19:48
@endolith: See my new answer. – harrymc Jul 15 '12 at 21:11

9 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

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".
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up vote 5 down vote
+100
  1. Open the PDF in Google Chrome.
  2. Print the particular page as PDF.
  3. Now you can copy the text from PDF. But I don't think you could copy the table directly.
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docs.google.com/open?id=0B0U0hneaP_FcYWprOFpEbTVqdkk See my result. – Khaleel Jul 16 '12 at 9:58
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This works for me, too. This is the easiest method I see here. – endolith Jul 16 '12 at 14:38
1  
Absolutely brilliant. Oh, you can drag files to Chrome's tab bar to quickly open them, by the way. – tomeoftom Feb 19 at 6:42
up vote 2 down vote

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.

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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 at 3:52
up vote 1 down vote

I have a workaround explained here:

Summary: you should upload the PDF file to Google Docs and let it convert it to its own editable format. Alternatively, if the file is too large, you can first save it to an image and then upload the image to Google Docs, which will do the OCR.

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1  
Could you please summarize your article here? We prefer you do that as opposed to just linking your own blog post – Simon Sheehan Feb 10 '12 at 21:53
up vote 1 down vote

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.

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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 '12 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 '12 at 14:42
For single columns, probably so. For the whole table, see my other answer. – Michael Hampton Jul 16 '12 at 14:44
up vote 1 down vote

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

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up vote 0 down vote

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. :(

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up vote 0 down vote

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 '12 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 '12 at 5:48
I tried PrimoPDF and qvPDF (which uses GhostScript) – endolith Jul 16 '12 at 14:33
See my above addition. – harrymc Jul 17 '12 at 8:07
...I also uploaded my one-page pdf to here (60 seconds wait time). – harrymc Jul 17 '12 at 8:12
up vote 0 down vote

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/evince → override_restrictions).

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protected by slhck♦ Oct 23 '12 at 6:42

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