Summary: PDF format is an excellent way to share documents knowing that they'll display the same regardless of where viewed. You can do more, sometimes.
I seem to be "out of step" concerning your delight in pdf documents, which I find totally user unfriendly. I do a lot of editing, copying and pasting (for personal commitments and study purposes). I cannot do that with pdf documents and often finish up frustrated after wasting a lot of time trying to buck the (system) document or by laboriously 'copy typing' a particular extract that I need. Am I missing something here in my understanding and use of pdf documents, which would account for my inability to edit or copy and paste extracts in the same way that I can with, say, WORD documents ?
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Yes, there is something you're missing.
But you're very much not alone.
The missing link is simply this: what, really, is the purpose of PDF format?
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PDF documents were originally intended as a digital replacement for paper, nothing more. Features like copy/paste were never intended or even initially implemented. Its primary purpose is for reading documents, and doing so in a way that the documents look the same, as much as is possible, across a wide variety of computers and devices.
Think of PDF format as a photocopy of a document and you won't be far off the mark. They look the same as the original, and they're portable - they look the same no matter what computer you view them on.
PDF is, primarily, a portable reading and display format, it does that very, very well.
Of course like all things computer, over time features have been added. Many PDF documents, depending on how they are created, can in fact be used as the source for a copy/paste.
There are two problems:
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the author of a PDF can elect to disable that functionality. Thus I can create a PDF in which copy is disabled. Why? Copyright and content theft protection are the normal reasons.
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Not all PDFs contain text - some contain images. Images of pages. This would be the equivalent of taking a digital picture of a page in a book and pasting that into a word document. You would not be able to select or copy pieces of that page as text.
PDFs were also never intended to be editable, and current programs that allow you to do so are not 100% effective depending specifically on the PDF you're trying to use it on.
PDF is a wonderful, portable reading format. But you're correct, if you're trying to do much more than read, it may well fall short, depending on the specifics of the documents you're attempting to operate on.
Article C3844 - August 20, 2009
Why not convert it to a word doc, then edit it. Then convert it back to a PDF. All you would need is word and adobe acrobat.
Posted by: jack mccurdy at August 26, 2009 7:19 AMIf you are using Office 2003 (or later), you must have 'Microsoft Office Document Image Writer' on your Control Panel's Printers and Faxes.
Posted by: William Surya Permana at August 26, 2009 8:33 PMThen to convert your PDF to DOC, do these:
1.Open your PDF file.
2.Print it by using 'Microsoft Office Document Image Writer'.
3.Save the image as MDI.
4.Open the MDI file using 'Microsoft Office Document Imaging'
5.Click Tools > 'Send Text to Word'
6.Last, follow the instructions. ^^ and.. it's done.
You can't copy/paste because of the restriction set by the creator. That's the so called PDF Owner Password.
Posted by: Melvin James at August 27, 2009 11:50 PMIn fact, you can just convert the PDF to Word then you can copy/paste, or even edit as you wish.But legally of course.
Not many PDF to Word converters support this function, especailly the online converter.
So you can try AnyBizSoft PDF to Word converter to change the protected PDF to Word. It's a very cool program, the output quality is excellent. You can have a try.
I use the Snipping tool in Vista and W7 to copy and paste. Much better than PrintScreen as you can copy small portions.
Posted by: Andrew Hardie at October 30, 2009 5:24 AMYou have to enable Tablet though.
Just like jack mccurdy said,why not convert it to word,it can save a lot of time.but abobe acrobat is very costly,not suitable for enterprise not for common users.you can try simpo PDF to Word to do that which is very cheap but works very well. i had tested.
Posted by: kethy at January 19, 2010 7:36 PM