Copy text from a PDF to word. Just get Symbols

[SebastiaoV]

Hello,

I have a public PDF with no Copying Restrictions. When I try to copy text from the PDF highlighted text to WORD I only get unreadable garbage.
I can select the desired text and copy it into word but when I paste the text it is pasted like symbols and lines.

I tried Special Paste and does not works. It says the font is a Gill Sans something (with numbers and so on), no really a font it seems but when i change it to Arial i still get symbols.

Any help or ideas,

Cheers,
Sebastian

[Altyin]

A PDF file does not store enough information to enable you to re-create it as a Word document (that's why it was invented, to prevent people copying files).

[try67]

That's hardly why the PDF format was invented...

[rogerkttty]

A PDF file does not store enough information to enable you to re-create it as a Word document (that's why it was invented, to prevent people copying files).

I agree with your opinion, PDF is end or export file and in order to preserve layout and any other content, it is existed independent from OS and applications. It displays like a photocopy of original file and the codes of it is totally different from Word, so there are many uncompatible issues out there.

Basically, a well-tagged PDF file can be copied successfully but the failing instances varies by multiple reasons.  

[Barbara_Humphrey]

Here's the solution.  When you open the PDF document in "Preview", do not do any "saves" on it before you have copied the data you want to paste into Word.  Before you do anything, Do a "save as" on the document and keep one fresh copy just in case you forget and do a save on it.  Once you do a "save" on a PDF document, it will convert the text to garbage when pasted into Word.  It works. 

[letsTalkAdobe]

The CutePDF fix looks like it completely works for me!!!

Printed document through CutePDF, selecting settings that minimized optimization and requested native True Type fonts  (sorry didn't document exactly.....didn't think it would work right away!) .

Then did Acrobat OCR, and now I can copy and paste from Acrobat to other programs without garbage here and there.

[somebody1]

that happens to me tooo i dont get it 😞

[Dhaval0D4C]

Print the PDF into PDF. then try converting.. it worked for me.

[Dhaval0D4C]

Print the PDF into PDF. then try converting to word. worked for me.

[niksmif]

In Acrobat Pro delete all font information: Edit > Preflight > pdf fixups > Convert fonts to outlines.

Next, re-recognise all text: Scan and OCR > Recognise text.

Then export as Plain text.

You may get the odd scan error.