How do I copy-and-paste editable text from PDF to Word?

Dear Lori,

I need to copy and paste blocks of text from a PDF file to a Word document so that I can edit the text in word and add add additional material. In older versions of Acrobat Reader (5.0 and, I believe, 6.0), all I had to do was select the text tool, click-and-drag the vertical line cursor to select the text I wanted to copy, hit Ctl-C to copy it to the clipboard, and then simply paste it into my Word document. Now that I've started using Acrobat 8.0, however, doing this same copy-and-paste seems to be difficult if not impossible. When I try using the Select Tool (next to the Hand Tool), I either get a crosshair cursor that wants to let me open a box or, more often, I get nothing at all and simply can't select any text. What do I have to do to be able to do a simple text-copy-and-paste from a PDF file to a Word document?

— Jan

Lori responds,

Hi Jan,

The select tools have been updated, but the select behavior is the same in Acrobat 8. You have one of two problems with the PDF file:

1. When you see "crosshairs" vs. a "text cursor" the document is a scanned PDF — just an "image" vs. a document with text. Select Document > OCR Text Recognition > Recognize Text Using OCR to convert the document from "image only" to actual text that can be selected.

2. The PDF may be protected - that is the author has selected to disable the ability to copy/paste from the document. To check security settings, select File > Properties and select the Security tab. Does it say you have rights to copy/paste?

— Lori

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