On 11/12/06 2:33 PM, "joe" <joe at joethejuggler.com> wrote: >> Not sure about that. All I ever do in the area you're discussing is >> scan >> documents and select sections for inputting their text into my Word >> docs. I >> don't even use database softwear. > Sounds like Brian is using some kind of OCR that's part of his > scanner software. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in Preview that > could take text out of a PDF if said text is just an embedded image. > Mark is right--you need some OCR software somewhere to make the > scanned recipes into text. It sounds like the recipe project won't > be something you can fully automate--I'm guessing the recipes aren't > in a standard format, so you'll have do some copy and pasting of text > into whatever db you set up. (Filemaker would work fine for that--or > a dedicated recipe program. Or you could probably find a nice recipe > template for Filemaker.) > > Joe Not true, Joe. I actually am talking about extracting text from .pdf files. And these are usually .pdf files someone's emailed to me. If you look in the preview Help file you'll see that all you have to do is select the "text tool" in the Preview header, highlight the copy in any .pdf file, and then simply copy and paste it into a Word doc. I do it all the time. Try it. Brian