FYI - to copy text from a PDF

[Sydnie]

If you have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat (free download) there is a tool at the top of the tool bar that allows you to copy and paste the text of your choice.

Click the camera icon. It will give you a cross hair looking cursor. Right click and hold it, drag the cursor over the text until you have it trapped inside a box. Release the mouse button and it will save that text to your clipboard. Open Paint or any other graphic program and paste that info into a blank pallette. Save the file as a gif or jpg, upload it to a server (like Photobucket) and then you can post it just as you would any graphic.

Here's an example of text I nabbed from the emails this way -

[robinlynne]

1. oh you rock! thanks.

[uppityperson]

2. Thanks. PDFs made me mad because of not being able to copy. Thanks. nt

[tuvor]

3. So you're not actually copying the text, but a picture of the text?

Is that right?

[SharonRB]

4. Yes.

[tuvor]

6. Thank you.

[UnyieldingHierophant]

5. Yes*

[tuvor]

7. Thank you*

:)

[bettyellen]

9. yep

[Old and In the Way]

8. Another handy pdf trick

If you have software that "prints" to pdf.

If you only want a single page out of a huge .pdf file, I output or "print" only the selected page(s) to a new pdf file.

[Danascot]

10. Yet another Acrobat trick

Many pdf files containing clear appearing text can be converted into a Word type text document in Acrobat as follows: Click file, save as, and select rtf as the file type. A file is saved that can be opened in Word, wordpad, or any other word processing program that can open a text file. You can then highlight, copy and paste the text into your DU post.

HOWEVER, there is a lot to be said for using Sydnie's graphic capture technique because it preserves the look of the original document and contributes to authenticity, context and other nice qualities.

[Marie26]

11. Cool, thank you. nt

[seafan]

12. Thanks again, Sydnie. Great to have tech folks for us old geezers, lol. n/t

[Jonathan50]

13. You can also use a screen capture program

I use Paint Shop Pro but Photoshop and others do it too, and you can get standalone screen capture.

I don't use Acrobat reader because my computer is old and I don't have much hard drive space left, I use Foxit PDF reader. It's only 1.5 mB to download and installs very easily and it's free.

http://www.download.com/Foxit-PDF-Reader/3000-2079_4-10313206.html

[Raksha]

14. Thanks for the information,.

It always annoys me not to be able to copy from .pdf documents. Now I know what to do about it.

[Chico Man]

15. You can also often use the "select tool" to cut and paste from PDF

As long as the PDF was not created from an image... use the select tool to cut and paste with ease.

[NotGivingUp]

16. very cool! thanks for sharing!