How to Copy and Paste the Contents of a PDF File into a New File

Use Adobe Acrobat Reader

Open Acrobat Reader. Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is Adobe's free PDF viewing program. Depending on the type of PDF file downloaded, you can select and copy the content in the PDF file using this program.

If you don't have Adobe Reader, you can download and install this program for free.

Open the PDF file. Click File , select Open in the menu that appears, select the PDF file, and click Open in the lower right corner of the window.

If Adobe Reader is not the default PDF program, simply double-click the PDF file you want to view to open it with Acrobat Reader.

Click Edit . It's in the top-left corner of the Acrobat Reader window (Windows) or in the top-left corner of the screen (Mac). The screen will display a list of options.

Click Select All in the Edit menu . This selects all the text on the page, except for the image.

If the entire text is colored blue, you cannot copy and paste the text as text. You will need to use Google Drive.

Click Edit again, then click Copy to copy the selected text.

If the PDF file has multiple pages, you will have to go back and copy each page after pasting the content of this page.

Open a new document. Typically, you'll need to open a program like Microsoft Word, Pages, or Google Docs.

You can use a text editor like Notepad or TextEdit, but the formatting of the PDF will be changed if you use this option.

Paste the copied content by pressing Ctrl+V (on Windows) or ⌘ Command+V (on Mac). You will see the content copied from the PDF displayed in the text.

If using keyboard shortcuts doesn't work, you can click on the blank page of the text and try again.

You can also right-click on the page and select Paste from the menu that appears.

Use Google Drive

Use this method when the PDF file contains text encoded as an image. Scanned PDF files often display as image files instead of text files. You will need to use the Optical Character Recognition (OCR for short) program to convert the image into selectable text. Google Drive includes a free OCR service when uploading PDF files and is effective in most cases.

If the PDF file has copy protection set up, Google Drive cannot remove the PDF file's protection setting while performing the OCR step.

Open Google Drive by visiting https://drive.google.com/ from your favorite browser. This will open the Google Drive page if you're signed in.

If you're not signed in to your Google account, enter your email address and password before continuing.

Click the blue NEW button in the upper left corner of the Drive page. The screen will display a list of options.

Click File upload . It's at the top of the menu that appears to open a new window.

Select the PDF file by clicking on the file you want.

First, you may have to click the folder containing the PDF file on the left side of the window.

Click Open in the bottom right corner of the window to upload the PDF file to Google Drive.

Select the uploaded PDF file. Once the PDF file is uploaded to Google Drive, you'll click on it to select it.

Click ⋮ at the top of the page to open the selection list.

Select Open with . It's near the top of the menu. You will see another menu appear next to this selection.

Click Google Docs in the menu. This requires Drive to scan the text of the PDF file into a Google Doc - this may take some time depending on the length of the file's text.

Check which text has been converted. Google Drive's OCR program is not perfect and may make errors or not fully convert text. You'll see a lot of white space between sections; so check to make sure the entire text has been converted.

If you encounter an error, you can correct it in Google Docs before copying the text.

Select text. Click Edit in the top left corner of the page, then choose Select all from the menu.

Copy the text by clicking Edit again and selecting Copy .

Open a new document. Typically, you'll need to open a program like Microsoft Word, Pages, or Google Docs.

You can use a text editor like Notepad or TextEdit, but the formatting of the PDF will be changed if you use this option.

Paste the copied text by pressing Ctrl+V (on Windows) or ⌘ Command+V (on Mac). You will see the PDF content displayed in the text.

If using keyboard shortcuts doesn't work, you can click on the blank page on the text and try again.

You can also right-click on the page and select Paste from the menu that appears.

Convert PDF to Word

Open the PDF to Word conversion page by visiting http://pdf2doc.com/ from your favorite browser.

This site only converts PDF files to Word and does not support copying and pasting text.

Click the UPLOAD FILES button in the middle of the page to open a new window.

Select the PDF file by clicking on the file you want to use.

First, you may have to click the folder containing the PDF file on the left side of the window.

Click Open in the bottom right corner of the window to upload the PDF file to the conversion page.

Click the yellow DOWNLOAD button displayed below the PDF file name after the download and conversion process is complete. This is the operation of downloading a PDF file in Word format.

You can open a Word document by double-clicking the file and edit the content copied from the PDF file.

Note, PDF files scanned to your computer will be in image format when downloaded. You will need to use Google Drive to process these files.

Marvin Fry

Update 03 November 2023