How to extract text from PDF

Today, PDF documents have become a standard format for sharing and preserving information across organizations. However, sometimes it may be necessary to extract text from a PDF file for various reasons, such as editing, analyzing, or simply copying and pasting the content for organizational records.

There are several ways to extract text from PDF files. The effectiveness of each method depends on the frequency and complexity of text extraction required by the organization.

Method 1: copy and paste

The simplest and most common method to extract text from a PDF file is to use the copy and paste function. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Open the PDF document using a PDF reader, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader.
2. Select the text you want to extract by dragging the mouse cursor over the desired area.
3. Right click on the selected text and choose the “Copy” option.
4. Open a text editor or word processing software (for example, Microsoft Word, Google Docs).
5. Paste the copied text into the text editor by right-clicking and choosing the “Paste” option or using the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+V” (or “Command+V” on Mac).

This method works well for extracting a small amount of text or when the PDF file has no formatting issues. Typically, this method is suitable for tasks that do not have frequent or routine text extraction requirements.

Method 2: Use PDF to Text Converter Tools

If you need to extract text from PDF files frequently, it might be worth considering dedicated conversion tools. These tools offer more advanced features and greater precision for extracting text from PDF files.

These tools are available as software, web-based online tools, and even mobile applications. Here is how you can use such software:

1. Do your research and choose a reliable PDF to text converter software that suits your needs. Some popular options include Adobe Acrobat Pro, Nitro PDF, PDF2Go, or PDFelement.
2. Install the software on your computer or mobile device and launch it. Alternatively, open the website for a web-based PDF converter.
3. Open the PDF file within the converter. In most cases, you can click the “Open” button and browse to the file or drag and drop the PDF directly into the software.
4. Look for “PDF to Text” or similar options within the software. This may be located in the “Tools” or “Convert” menu.
5. Click the conversion option and specify any additional settings if available (such as output format or page range).
6. Start the conversion process and wait for the software to extract the text from the PDF file.
7. Once the conversion is complete, you can save the extracted text as a separate text file or copy and paste it into a text editor for later use.

Conversion software provides a more reliable and accurate extraction method, especially when dealing with complex or multi-page PDF documents. However, they provide little or no automation capability for complex or routine text extraction processes.

If you have a larger PDF file or multiple files to extract text from or if you need to extract text from PDF documents frequently for your business, ai-based OCR softwares such as Nanonets provide the most convenient solution. These tools provide OCR (optical character recognition) technology to recognize text from scanned documents or images within a PDF.

These tools are extremely fast, efficient, secure and scalable. They use a combination of ai, ML, OCR, RPA, text and pattern recognition, and many other techniques to ensure that the data extracted is accurate and reliable. Not only that, these data extraction tools can support text extraction from multiple sources, such as extracting text from images and even extracting handwritten text from images.

Looking to export scanned information PDF to text? Attempt Nanonetworks PDF to Text Converter free and automates the export of any information from any PDF document!

Apart from text extraction, these tools can support multiple data extraction use cases for all types of business tasks such as,

These automated data extraction tools, like Nanonets, provide custom, pre-trained data extraction models to ensure they are capable of supporting all types of documents and use cases.

Conclusion

In conclusion, extracting text from a PDF document can be easily achieved using various methods including copy and paste, conversion tools or through automated OCR software. Depending on your needs and the complexity of the PDF, you can choose the most suitable method to extract the desired text.

Frequent questions

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