PDF files

[Heliport]

How do I copy sections from a PDF file to paste into another document?

I can't find a copy/paste function.

[Evo]

press 'V' or click on the text select tool and highlight the text, then right click and select copy. Alternatively you can do 'shift-V' for column select, or G for graphics select.

[DubTrub]

Look for the "text selection" button in the Basic Toolbar (Adobe Reader 6.0), it looks like a capital "I" with a capital T next to it.

This selects the text, you can then "CTRL C" to copy, "CTRL V" to paste as normal.

DT

[ORAC]

Dragging sometimes doesn't work to select text. Under Edit, use "select All" (ctrl-A) to copy one page at a time, then use copy and paste it as normal.

If Select All doesn't work, try File, "Export document to text".

If they dont work, it's locked and your need a more specialised tool. I presume this is casual use and you're not interested in paying for that, but if you are you can use something like pdf2txt.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Heliport,

If CTRL + C and CTRL + V do not work, it could be because the document does not allow copying and pasting. The author can specify when they compose the document, whether or not it will allow copying of the text.

Take Care,

Richard

[Heliport]

Aaah! That might be the answer.
I've tried each method posted above without success.

This is the document from which I'm trying to copy a report.

AirProx

If someone else could spare a moment to try copying from it, we'll know if I'm being more thick than usual or that it can't be done.

[BOAC]

No luck with Acrobat 5, HP. I think it may be copy barred - although I get a warning when I open it that it contains 'features' which are not available in my version of Ac5.

See this

[fobotcso]

Check out BEagle's solution with Acrobat 6 and ORAC's suggestion to use OCR Here

[The Nr Fairy]

Passwords can be assigned to Acrobat documents which prevent copying and similar actions.

They can be removed. If you know (or guess) the original password (yes, I know, but it's an option) change security to "None" in the "File -> Document Security" menu option.

There is software to remove passwords. PDFRemover seems good, but unless you pay the $30, then it only does half the document. I also found APDFPR - seems to install and work reasonably well (ah - only decrypts first 2 pages).

Other PDF password remover programs can be found by googling for them.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Heliport,

Here is a picture of the Security Information for that PDF file:



Just about the only thing that document allows you to do is view it.

Take Care,

Richard

[Heliport]

Thanks for your efforts guys.
I'm sure the CAA has its reasons for attaching such strict limitations to the use of a safety document .....
..... I just can't imagine what they might be.

[Background Noise]

You can 'copy' anything on your screen by pressing ALT+Print Screen. You only get a picture of your screen, not editable text. But you could paste it into a document or a presentation - or I suppose you could process it with some OCR software.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Heliport,

Always glad to help.

Take Care,

Richard

[Keef]

Annoying isn't it!

The number of times I've had to do "Print screen" with PDFs, then OCR the pages back into the machine.

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

Heliport

Thanks for your efforts guys.
I'm sure the CAA has its reasons for attaching such strict limitations to the use of a safety document .....
..... I just can't imagine what they might be.

I would guess that the CAA have a policy of requiring that all their documents have restricted security settings, to minimize exposure in the event of a confidential document being accidentally disclosed.

However, when it comes to documents that are intended to be made public, they either forgot to reduce the security settings, didn't know how to, or didn't think were allowed to. Or even, if their PCs are centrally managed, they were not able to override the settings...

Just a guess...

Keef

The number of times I've had to do "Print screen" with PDFs, then OCR the pages back into the machine.

Which goes to show how ineffectual this sort of things is...

RTFM