Saturday 15 December 2012

How to copy a paragraph or two from protected pdf files into Word

  1. Open the pdf file and scroll down to the text you want to copy, so it's in the middle of your computer screen.
  2. Take a copy of what's on screen using the PrintScreen key, PRTSC.
  3. Paste this into a Word file.
  4. Save the Word file as a web page (not single file web page).
  5. Go to an online OCR (optical character recognition) site, such as http://www.onlineocr.net/
  6. Upload to the OCR site the image from the files folder you created in Step 4.
  7. Tell OCR to do its stuff.
  8. Select and copy the result into Word.
  9. Correct any errors - OCR isn't perfect yet.
  10. Pat yourself on the head, have a beer and accept that some nerd is going to call you a moron for not knowing a simpler way, but don't give a toss because this works.