[X4U] Mac OCR

[Randy B. Singer]

Michael Winter said:

>If I understand what you're asking, it all depends on how the pdf is 
>made. For most pdf's, the text is actually text (ASCII  or equivalent 
>characters) and can be selected. There are some pdf's however, where 
>what looks like text is actually an image of some text (what you get if 
>someone scans in a page of text). You can't select that "text" because 
>its really an image, you need to use OCR software to turn it into 
>actual text.


Exactly.  In short, a PDF of a graphic of a text document has no text in 
it to copy out of it.

Another reason why you may not be able to copy the text out of a PDF is 
because it was created with security set to keep you from doing this.

Most folks don't know that you can use the text selection tool in the 
free Adobe Acrobat Reader and copy and paste the text out of any PDF with 
text in it that isn't security protected.

You can also convert PDF's to text using:

PDF2Office $99
http://www.recosoft.com/products/pdf2office/index.htm

PDFtotext (free) (does not retain formatting)
http://q41.de/downloads/pdftotext_en/

OmniPage Pro for OS X will convert any PDF, even a PDF of a graphic with 
text in it, into a wordprocessing document, and it will retain all 
formatting, and you can then annotate or alter the document in your word 
processor.



Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

Routine OS X Maintenance and Generic Troubleshooting
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html