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673

I have found a very useful PDF on the Web. Is it possible to extract text from it?

Adobe Acrobat is a product that allows printed documents to be made available on line and retain their printed appearance. For this reason certain academic publishers use it to publish journals on line.

There is a problem that prevents you from extracting a quotation when using Acrobat within Internet Explorer. The following procedure will allow you to extract a quotation into a word processing package such as Word.

1. From the File menu of Internet Explorer select the Save option.
2. Start up the separate Acrobat Reader. This is available under Start > Programs > Utilities.
3. From the Acrobat's File menu select Open and select the file you saved in Step 1).
4. You are now able to "click and drag" to select the text you want. If the journal page consists of a number of columns you can select text from an individual column by holding down the Control key when clicking. (A rectangle will appear on the I bar to indicate that you will select just one column.)
5. From the Edit menu of Acrobat select Copy.
6. You are now able to move to Word and paste the quote into your document.

Please note that some pubishers deliberately disable the Click and Drag selection of text within a PDF to prevent such copying of text.

NB: please make sure that it is appropriate for you to be extracting and reproducing a quote in this way. Further guidance can be found online in the form of information to help students avoid submitting plagiarised work.