Comments on: Extracting Text From PDF Files

By: vicki

vicki — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:01:48 +0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

By: Jibson

Jibson — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 05:44:56 +0000

Brilliant. Drag and drop worked perfectly, first time.

By: grafisk webdesigner

grafisk webdesigner — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 23:12:15 +0000

Did not work for me either. Suspect this workflow does not support extracting scanned PDF files. Too bad.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 04:46:54 +0000

Mine didn’t work either, but my PDF is password protected and I need the text from it super bad!!

By: Jill

Jill — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:41:05 +0000

It did not work for me I get a blank empty file.

I am running OS X v. 10.5.8

By: Smart Ass

Smart Ass — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:05:07 +0000

It would be great if they had put which f***ing version of OSX they used. I don’t have the extrant PDF text in my OSX 10.4,,,

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:09:39 +0000

Thank you so much!

By: Bob Ericsson

Bob Ericsson — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:12:29 +0000

Any idea how to save the text without all the returns?

When the text is in columns in the pdf, all the line endings are saved as returns instead of flowing correctly…

By: mollivan_jon

mollivan_jon — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:44:12 +0000

Hey, indeed.

Thanks for that terrifically useful tip. It works like a charm. I just converted over a thousand PDF files to text files in about 5 minutes. Outstanding!

My default set-up in Automator (with Leopard OSX 10.5.5, using just the two steps you suggest) created duplicate text files for each PDF. I then checked the “Replace Existing Files” box in the “Extract PDF Text” step. That was counter-intuitive but did the trick. After that, I only got one text file per PDF and I was away.

Hurrah.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:18:04 +0000

I’m not sure off the top of my head, do a google search for it.

By: venkatesh Prasad J B

venkatesh Prasad J B — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:55:13 +0000

is there a way to convert PDF to pages or MS word using automator

By: nobody

nobody — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:04:36 +0000

I also have Tiger, and also don’t have “Extract PDF Text”

By: admin

admin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:20:52 +0000

It might. I haven’t got Tiger to test it on.

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:49:24 +0000

For some reason, I don’t have the “Extract PDF Text” option. My OS is Tiger. Does that have something to do with it?