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I have a problem with copying text from a PDF document.

Knowledge Base Article: KB279 - Created On: May 18, 2010 02:14 PM - Last Modified: May 2, 2012 06:23 AM

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Symptoms

I have a PDF document and using the "Select" tool I cannot copy into another document.

Cause

Not all PDF documents contain text data to select, some PDF documents such as those that often come from a scanner are image based.

Some documents have security restrictions that prohibit the copying of text.

Resolution

There are 2 possible causes for this and the solutions differ.

Image Based PDF documents

If you have a PDF document hat is image based as most of those that come from scanners are there is not text information to select or copy. You need to run the document through some OCR program. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition and is not available in versions of PDF-XChange up to and including v.2.x of PDF-XChange Viewer and v.4.x of the Driver and Tools Products.

Things that indicate a PDF might be image based include:

if you know it came from a scanner
if you cannot select text using the "Select Tool"
if you get no results searching for a word that you know is in the document
if you zoom the document greatly and it gets pixelated

Note! PDF-XChange, since build 200 has included OCR capability. If you run this OCR on your image based document you will be able to select text!

See this KB article for details KB#351: How do I OCR a document?

Text Based PDF Documents with security restrictions

The PDF specification allows for authors setting security restrictions on what can be copied from a PDF document. To see the security settings for a PDF document :

open it in PDF-XChange
go to File --> Document Properties --> Security [category] --> Document Permission Detail.
If the document has been secured in this fashion you will be able to select the text but the copy function will not be available.