Can't copy text from a pdf file

I am using foxit PDF reader to view my text book. I would like to copy the text from the pdf file into a word document but it won't let me. I can select the text fine but the option to copy text is not available. I can copy text from other documents but not some. Is there a way to get around this protection in windows?

8,207 12 12 gold badges 49 49 silver badges 58 58 bronze badges asked Sep 27, 2009 at 11:06 1,570 2 2 gold badges 17 17 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges

I see my answer doesn't work for you, so you have posted a bounty. If you post somewhere an example of such a pdf, I will have a look at it.

Commented Jul 15, 2012 at 10:04

@harrymc: Specifically, I was looking to copy the values from table 6.15 of acousticslab.org/papers/VassilakisP2001Dissertation.pdf

Commented Jul 15, 2012 at 19:48 @endolith: See my new answer. Commented Jul 15, 2012 at 21:11

12 Answers 12

The pdf file has probably been locked against copying text. Below are two ways to unlock it:

If the pdf has not been locked against printing, you can print it to a virtual pdf printer to create an unlocked file. See this:
"Remove Password and Unlock Protected PDF Which Allowed To Be Printed Without Knowing Secret".
If the print function has been locked out, see this :
"Remove Restrictions and Decrypt Password Protected PDF Files With PDF Unlocker".

answered Sep 27, 2009 at 11:22

You can see if the PDF is locked for copying. From the File menu choose Properties and on the Security tab is says whether Content Copying is allowed.

Commented Sep 9, 2015 at 19:40

Tried printing the PDF. The printed file does not allow to select text, it seems as it converted text to image.

Commented Jan 17, 2019 at 3:10 @queezz: The PDF must have contained the images to start with. Commented Jan 17, 2019 at 7:35

@harrymc Yes, there are images. But text is also converted into images. Google Chrome option works well on the same document.

Commented Jan 17, 2019 at 8:48

Your first link links to primopdf.com/installers/4.0.1/FreewarePrimo64Setup.exe which is bad it doesn't work and it looks like you never even archived it to archive.org either. Your second link is ok but it links to a file sharing site dfiles.eu/files/7kiqyvswk the file is ok though, checked with virustotal. But not so easy to find as there are various links on that mydigitallife page. It's where it says "PDF Unlocker is a free yet user-friendly tool which can be downloaded via the link here (current version 1.0.4)."

Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 8:13

Open the PDF in Google Chrome(drag and drop PDF file to Chrome).
Print the particular page as PDF or just open print preview.
Now you can copy the text from print preview or output PDF. But I don't think you could copy the table directly.

answered Jul 16, 2012 at 9:54 1,042 14 14 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges This works for me, too. This is the easiest method I see here. Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:38 Absolutely brilliant. Oh, you can drag files to Chrome's tab bar to quickly open them, by the way. Commented Feb 19, 2013 at 6:42 Neither of those methods worked for me in Chrome 53. Has the loophole possibly been closed? Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 2:42

Worked like a charm on Chrome 95. The Print dialog has an option to Save to PDF as well which kept the text while removing the protection. Adobe's print to Microsoft PDF printed as an image.

Commented Oct 22, 2021 at 17:59 I'm running Chrome ver 111 and the copying is also disabled when viewing in it. Commented Mar 21, 2023 at 22:04

I was able to create a DRM-free version of your PDF file using Ghostscript (which is available for Windows).

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=stripped.pdf VassilakisP2001Dissertation.pdf

The resulting file stripped.pdf can be loaded in Adobe Reader, and Reader will happily allow you to copy any part of it you wish. It also preserves most of the formatting of the table.

answered Jul 15, 2012 at 23:33 Michael Hampton Michael Hampton 14k 4 4 gold badges 48 48 silver badges 78 78 bronze badges

This is brilliant. My tax accountant refuses to give me non-DRM PDFs, nor the password to remove DRM. This solves my problem. Excellent work!

Commented Apr 28, 2013 at 3:52 If the PDF has a password, make sure to include the -sPDFPassword switch ( -sPDFPassword=password ). Commented Aug 16, 2017 at 23:02 You are super. Thanks. Commented May 17, 2020 at 14:33 You are a true hero. Fair use of my bought-and-paid-for PDFs FTW. Commented May 2 at 15:38

if copy is greyed out, as it now doubt is for you, then the PDF is 'locked', it can be read but is indeed stopping you from copy/pasting anything from it.

This website will unlock a PDF

answered Apr 15, 2019 at 8:05 24.4k 48 48 gold badges 166 166 silver badges 251 251 bronze badges this worked while all of the other options above didn't Commented Feb 8, 2021 at 11:23

I was able to copy the table from your PDF file successfully using Okular (for Linux; part of KDE). To do this, I had to go into Okular's settings and uncheck "Obey DRM restrictions."

I'm aware that this doesn't really help you much since you're running Windows, but it is a possibility if you have a Linux machine handy or are willing to install it.

Unfortunately it was plain text with no formatting, but it looks like it shouldn't be too hard to recreate the table. You can see the results of my copy and paste adventure here.

answered Jul 15, 2012 at 21:19 Michael Hampton Michael Hampton 14k 4 4 gold badges 48 48 silver badges 78 78 bronze badges

That's what VirtualBox is for. :D I can also copy the plain text without formatting, but by selecting one column at a time it is pretty easy to export.

Commented Jul 15, 2012 at 23:19

Looks like this is best for tables of numbers, since Okular lets you do rectangular selection of text and extract a single column in order.

Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:42 For single columns, probably so. For the whole table, see my other answer. Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:44 Note that Okular can run on Windows. In fact a lot of KDE software can run on windows. Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 19:53

This managed to convert basic text. It stuggled with tables though.

answered Sep 9, 2015 at 19:49 Rob Sedgwick Rob Sedgwick 694 9 9 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges

You can use GT Text is a program that translate images (also pdf snapshots = image) to text. You can select the area and copies it to clipboard It is free

answered Jul 27, 2012 at 7:58 11 1 1 bronze badge

If you're just looking for short snippets, you can often type a few words into google inside quote marks and find the exact quote already scanned in some other format or typed by someone else.

Another option is "Document from Photo" in the Google Docs Android app, which will put the text through OCR. This is error-prone, of course.

I wish PDF locking functionality never existed. :(

answered Jul 11, 2012 at 17:34 7,591 26 26 gold badges 87 87 silver badges 124 124 bronze badges

Answer to endolith:

Your PDF is protected against copying, but is not protected against printing.

So I have printed the one page containing table 6.15 into another PDF that is not protected against copying, selected and copied the table, then pasted it into Word. To my great surprise the result of the paste was utter rubbish.

I have now taken a further look at this table and found a very surprising result : This is not a table !

It is actually a montage of small pieces of text, positioned on the page so as to look like a table. But this is not a real table.

The best you can do is either rewrite the whole thing as a table, or just use in your work a screenshot of this table-like assembled text.

Here is my screenshot of the table, as taken from my generated one-page pdf document :