PDF copy protected files - how to convert to txt

Nice idea but no need now. Cheers.

Phil The uk.d-i-y FAQ is at

A Google for "pdf2txt" or "pdf2text" would be informative. There are a number of programs about that do exactly what you want.

You can cut some of the noise out by saving the pdr as a tiff image and then doing OCR direct from this, still needs the proof reading though.

AJH

It's a bit late in the day a this point in time relatively speaking, but if you had an old CorelDraw ver. 8, it includes an OCR program in the suite that will convert any bitmap text image to a text file. So

john

Try to find somebody with a Mac computer. OS X is the current operating system and has a feature whereby anything that can be displayed on the screen can be 'Printed to PDF'. That presumably means that the new PDF file won't be copy protected.

If the files aren't too big, I could try coverting one for you - but I'm only on a dial-up connection, so contact me first before sending any large file.

Some OCR will work directly from a pdf.

Chris

In message , Phil Addison writes

Sort of but not quite.

You can programs that enable you to 'print' from a program and produce a pdf file.

Depending on how they work this may I guess produce a pdf without the copy protection.

I use Cutepdf for this:

I find it useful for 'saving' copies of webpages, such a receipts etc. among other things.

Thanks for all the extra suggestions, but see my message timed at 20:42 - its all sorted now. :-)

For the screen copy ideas - sorry but there are 13 large pages.

Phil The uk.d-i-y FAQ is at

You may get somewhere with outputting as .pdf again (file | export as PDF - or something like that)

Chris

It's built in to XP. My work install had it available under add printers without needing the XP CD. I think it's under Generic, but I'm not sure and I'm on Linux here.

Chris

The first few hits (when I tried it) respect the security options though.

Chris

Thanks for your efforts Chris, but I did post last night that it was all sorted via ghostscript.

Phil

If the copy-protection allows printing, set up a generic text printer driver and specify printer location as "file". You will then get a plain-text file of the text.

Another possibility is to look at the disabled accessibility features on Adobe's website.

Owain

The only program to unlock a PDF is made by Elcomsoft but is expensive.

The patch to xpdf/pdf2txt took me 2 min to write - having never seen the source before.

I find though that I haven't saved it.

That's what I thought - and was going to post to this effect last night. But I did an experiment first, and the file contained gobbledegook!

Use Foxit Reader to open them. You can use it to copy text and paste to a word processor.

However the protected files are there like that for a reason. They are copyrighted, probably.

Thus neatly making the topic relevant to uk.d-i-y -- well done:-) (though posting as snipped-for-privacy@mauve.demon.co.uk was possibly less clever)

Douglas de Lacey

Historical - userID was chosen when I was still using windows (3.11)