The Art of Copy Paste : An Introductory Guide for Law Students Vol.2

This is the second post on how to copy paste stuff. The previous post covered on how to copy text from web. Some concepts used here have been explained in the previous post in much more detail.

Copying From PDF

a) Protected PDF :- If you are using a protected PDF then you will have (SECURED) in its title like below:-

Anybizsoft PDF Password Remover, a paid software is the best way to go for removing the restrictions imposed on the file. BeCyPDFMetaEdit is another free good alternative. (Credits : Labnol)  To remove restriction run the program and locate the pdf file, change the mode to ‘Complete Rewrite’ and press OK. In the Security tab, set the ‘Security System’ to ‘No encryption’ and click the Save button.  It is not as effective as Anybizsoft and may not work sometime but then its free.

b) OCR Method:- Like mentioned in the previous post on copying from web OCR can also be used to copy from PDFs. They become really useful if the PDF is actually a scanned document. The best OCR are the Abbyy Fine Reader and Adobe X Pro.

Among the free OCRs FreeOCR , Online OCR and Google docs are good options.

To use Google Docs as free OCR upload the PDF and while uploading it tick the ‘Convert text from PDF and image files to Google documents’ checkbox.

Now that you know it don’t trust OCR blindly (Accuracy of conversion varies depending upon legibility of text in PDF) and for heaven’s sake at least read your write-up once before you submit it. Come on it’s not that big a pain to read what you have written on your own. Or what you claim that you have written.

The next post cover in detail how to paste text (Ctrl +V) effectively.