extracting text from PDF document without using adobe acrobat

[scottian]

as the title suggests, is there a way to extract the text from an adobe pdf document without having adobe acrobat installed.

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[coakerb]

I maybe on the wrong tram here...but how can you extract something you cant see....PDF needs Adobe acrobat application to show the document I would have thought....so if don`t have it installed how can you read it....aploigise if I have misunderstood question

 

[patrick118]

Well as far as i know you always need a reader for pdf documents. Word can't read it automatically. With acrobat reader 6 you can select all the text and then copy it to Word.
PAtrick

 

[scottian]

Ive have the reader installed. its just that i have a document with a matrix of complex columns and rows and i need to import it into access but keep the data in line with the matrix. when i copy and paste i lose the data formatting and rows and columns move

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[mtmoon]

This might seem farfetched, but do you have any other graphics programs installed? Sometimes they can read pdf files. Illustrator 10 will open them as formatted. Then maybe you could paste from that program into access. I've circumvented some formatting issues this way.

 

[jfhewitt]

I think you now see why Adobe charges an arm and leg for Acrobat 5 or 6. They don't want you to copy formatting with reader.

 

[dcompto]

I don't know how many columns are involved, but what about using the "Column Select tool" in Acrobat Reader 5.1 to cut and paste one column at a time.

Also, I have never used it, but there is "pdf2word" software. See...

http://www.verypdf.com/pdf2word/

 

[RocSky]

just try pdfToText from xpdf

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RocSky SPlitPDF:Split one multipage Pdf document into one page PDF Documents
RocSky PDFMerger:Merge many a PDF document in a folder into one PDF document

Pls visit

http://www.rocsky.com