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PDF conversion to text

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by lmayeda

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We often get job specifications in PDF format and have the requirement of re-entering the same information into a Word document. The problem is that the PDF document is structured in multi-level paragraph form and when we cut and paste it into Word, all of the paragraph numbers and letters appear together (1,1.a,1.b,2,2.a,2.b etc), followed by all the text, rather than number, text, number, text, etc (1. Subject heading, 1.a Subheading a, 1.b subheading b, etc). Is there a way to be able to extract the information from PDF w/o having to practically re-type the entire document or using a scanner?

10 replies

by jschein

* Open the file you want to retrieve and use the "Copy File to Clip Board" command, under "Edit" pull down in Acrobat (5.0).
* Once copied, paste in open MS Word document.

This simple approach generally maintains most of the layout properties, that I have run across in our requirements, and will at the very least give you editable text that you can quickly modify to fit your requirements, if that is all you are primarily after.

Other than that, your only hope will be the purchase of a third-party software package for $100-1000.00 usd.

Good luck

by lmayeda

I can get the text to copy to Word but the structure is so garbled. If the pdf page has 3 columns of information, after it is copied to Word, the first column shows up, then below it will be infor from the 2nd column and finally below it is the info from the 3rd column. Thanks anyway

by jackofalltech

Try installing a plain-text printer driver with the output going to a file. The open the PDF and print it on the text printer.

Ralph

by lmayeda

I haven't tried this but I would still need to get the text into some sort of file format. Thanks for your time

by lmayeda

I was hoping that my problem was just something I didn't know how to do in PDF. Rather than try a 3rd party software, I will go the scanner/OCR route and hopefully get decent results that will require less re-typing. Thanks all for your answers.

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