Is there a way to cut and paste words from Adobe Acrobat reader into MS Word?

I also am fine using HTML if I need to paste. I was only trying to help Meir, and he seems to be happy with the HTML advice we gave him.

Meir - you dont look for select in the topmost browser tool bar but a little lower in the pdf tool bar. there is a select tool. Should be next to the hand tool. I know you dont need it now but for future reference.

I prefer to have the Chinese characters without pinyin or translation so I can practice reading them without being distracted by latin alphabets when I try to study the characters

so I copy the dialogue from the web page instead of using the pdf or the html file.

I click on the dialogue tab, drag the mouse over the sentences, and then copy and paste special/text only into a word file.

Thanks so much everyone for your quick responses. Unfortunately, the only option I found for "select" in Adobe reader was the "select all" option and that still churned out gibberish.

On a happy note, I never even noticed the HTML link on the bottom and when I hit that it worked like a charm! (though the first time it was blank-go figure).

So, in the end, if I use the HTML option things will be fine.

Thanks so much everyone for your very helpful feedback and suggestions!

谢谢 !!

(Amazing result of successful cutting and pasting )

Meir

Hello fudawei - Yes, you're right, i guess i am still catching up on how most people use this. As a Newbie, like myself, I actually just copy portion or words on a lesson that I want to learn and compile them in one file or will save it as an image and upload it to my ipod (really need to try iFlash!) :-)

Anyway, I will still be forwarding this to our technical team so they can provide us with explanations on why chinese characters wasn't converting correctly...

In preview I have the problem that the pinyin is not treated as accented letters but letters with accents placed on top later on.

You can also try the html version of the pdf documents.

marco ... that would sort of defeat the purpose. Most people attempting to grab the data are doing it so that they can manipulate it in a spreadsheet or flashcard program. If they just wanted to look at it, they can just use the original .pdf files. Again, the problem is the font choice. For whatever reason, it appears that CPOD is using a non-standard (read: non-unicode) font. In any case, it doesn't play well with the standard Asian font set that comes with Windows. Whether or not they can be downloaded and installed separately on a Windows system (and if that would solve the problem) ... I dunno. I'm gonna go out on a limb and GUESS that you are using some proprietary Asian-capable word processor to build your documents, and that's why you're probably why you're not keen on the idea of switching to unicode. Just a guess. On the other hand, I have no problem using the .html version (accessed by the link at the bottom of each .pdf page), so I'm indifferent to the problem.

Meir and RJ - I have another suggestion that you can try..Why not do a snapshot? Since we have issues with PDF converting it to weird characters, let's just capture it as an image.
1. Open PDF and choose "Snapshot" (this should be the camera icon located at the navigation bar). If you don't have that option displaying, click on View > Toolbars > Choose Basic 2. Highlight the characters that you want 3. Go to Word right click and paste (or just do CTRL V) **I would suggest making your PDF view in a 100% scale... - Marco

square {hole} of course...

I'm like LostInAsia, only use html and they work just fine. Truth is, pdf aren't meant to facilitate copy/paste, rather the contrary, so even when allowed, it's trying to fit a round peg in a square whole

Youre right Marco, it works. I guess newer versions have changed, but there still is a problem. The Chinese characters dont copy correctly. is there a way to get around this?

RJ

I was always under the impression that the reason that cut-n-paste didn't work for most of us was because you're using hybrid fonts (perhaps mapped to Macs?) instead of unicode.

Hi Meir,

You can try to follow this steps in copying and pasting something from PDF to a Word Document (I will try to get this added to our help page)

1. Open PDF and choose "Select" (this should be located at the navigation bar). If you don't have that option displaying, click on View > Toolbars > Choose Basic

2. Copy the characters that you want and paste it to Word.

This perfectly works for me and I am using Adobe Reader v7.0. If it still doesn't work, let me know the version of your PDF and we'll check it..there is still hope! :-)

with the Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional I use I never had those probs...

iMandarinpod's PDF are cut and paste friendly. I dont understand why Chinesepod's arent

If you install the PDF "writer" rather than just the "reader" this can be done, but unlike the "reader", the "writer" (editing software), is not free. The PDF's are not cut and paste friendly by design but as Lost In Asia has suggested, use the html file instead and you should have better luck.

The PDFs aren't very friendly to cutting and pasting. Instead try the HTML version--at the bottom of the PDF, click on "Text version" and that'll take you to the HTML for the dialogue.

That should definitely help with the pinyin; I'm not sure if it'll sort out the Chinese character issues.

I think it's not so much a bug as just the way the system works. I know I pretty much use ONLY the html files, and almost never look at the PDFs.

It should be just copy + paste, but this feature is clearly broken. It is not Word related. I have tried to paste into DimSum (very Chinese aware and mulptiple encoding able) but to no avail.

I think it is a bug.