While the PDF file format is a great tool for sharing documents while retaining their formatting and for assuring that documents aren’t changed (contracts, for instance), sometimes you need to use the text from a PDF. You may need to copy a paragraph, a page or more, and edit it in a document, or in another word processor or text editor.

While you can select text in a PDF, chances are that this text will be seriously munged. You’ll often see odd breaks, or no breaks at all, and styles will be lost.

There are ways, however, that you can convert a PDF to formatted text. Here’s how to do this. Create a workflow that extracts text The first method is the cheapest, and uses a tool that is part of OS X: Automator. You can use Automator to create a workflow that can extract text from PDFs and save it as a text or RTF document. Adapters for mac book pro mid 2011. Open Automator, which is in your Applications folder. On the first screen that displays, choose to make a Workflow.

Click on Files & Folders in the leftmost column, then drag Ask For Finder Items from the second column to the larger section at the right of the Automator window. Next, click on PDFs in the leftmost column, and drag Extract PDF Text from the second column to a point below the first item you dragged to the right. The second Automator action allows you to choose whether you want to save the text extracted from your PDFs as Plain Text or Rich Text. In most cases, you’ll want to check the second option, as this will retain formatting, such as bold and italic text.

PDF files are great, but few document types are as malleable as those specific to Microsoft Word. Here's how to convert a PDF file into a Word document, whether you prefer to use Adobe's software. Learn how to export a Pages document as a PDF, Microsoft Word file, Pages '09 file, and more.

Word, Apple’s TextEdit, Pages, and most other text editors can handle Rich Text format. A simple (and inexpensive) way to extract text from a PDF is to use an Automator workflow.

After you've added the two Automator actions, your window should look like this. Press Command-S. Give your workflow a name, such as PDF to RTF, and then choose Application from the File Format pop-up menu. Finally, click on Save.

Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. How to format my passport external hard drive. How to Partition and Format a WD Drive on macOS El Capitan, Sierra, and High Sierra Operating System Instructions macOS 10.11.x (El Capitan) and macOS 10.12.x (Sierra) macOS 10.13.x (High Sierra). This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone.

Launch this application, select a PDF file in the screen that appears, and then let Automator do its work. Open the file that appears—it will have the same name as your source file, but will end with the file extension.rtf. Open this document in Word and you’ll see the text of your PDF file, with text formatting but no layout (no columns, and so on). This text can be a bit messy, but you can now edit it or copy it and use it in other documents.

Use a dedicated program to convert a document There is a plethora of programs that can convert PDFs to Word documents, retaining formatting and images. If you need more than just the text, and want to make Word documents that look like your PDFs, you’ll need to go this route. One of the most effective is Solid Documents’ $80 (Solid PDF To Word For Mac)[It can convert a PDF into a Word document that retains much, if not all, of the original formatting. (The program can also convert PDFs to Apple’s Pages format, Excel, HTML, and more.) I converted a number of complex PDFs using the program, notably an issue of Macworld, a Take Control book, and a booklet for a CD. While Solid PDF To Word takes a bit of time to make its conversions, the Word files do ressemble the originals. I used Solid PDF To Word to convert a Macworld issue with complex formatting. As you can see, the resulting Word file (right) looks a lot like the original PDF (left).