Copy paste loses spaces (PDF>Text)

[acme]

in copying text from a PDF (Preview) into TextEdit, some of the words lose the spaces between the words.

Apple says that this is "right" but I can find no brains-based reasoning behind why it would be right at all.

The source text is a resume. There's no fancy-pants effects or formatting going on. It's all just text. maybe some bulleted text but it's just..you know...text.

any clues about this?

thank you!

a

[NaOH]

Lots of factors could contribute to issues here since there are different PDF rendering engines (both for creating and viewing the PDF), differences in the source material (hard or soft line breaks), etc. Your best bet will likely be to copy/paste the text incrementally, checking it as you go, or you could try getting the text using a different application.

For extracting large amounts of PDF text, I actually use my note-taking application, the free Notational Velocity. Drag a PDF to its Dock icon, or right click on the PDF and use Open With, and—voilà—a new note with just the PDF text. If all looks good, you could then copy/paste the text over to TextEdit.

[NaOH]

Additional Point: The Right Click > Open With option is a simple way to see what applications you already have that can view a particular file type. You may already have something else which can do with PDFs what I do with Notational Velocity.

[acme]

OK..well, thank you NaOH... I had no idea that copy/pasting text from a pdf could be so fraught with peril!

Thank you for your technique and link to that free app, too!

a

[acme]

Quote: Originally Posted by NaOH Additional Point: The Right Click > Open With option is a simple way to see what applications you already have that can view a particular file type. You may already have something else which can do with PDFs what I do with Notational Velocity.

that's good to know, too!

thank you