Extracting text from an image pdf

soyleche · November 16, 2020, 4:54pm

Does anyone know a good way to extract data from a pdf - not a pdf with forms and such, but one created from a scan?

Thanks

Celalta · November 16, 2020, 5:45pm

Have you tried dropping it in OneNote? You said it’s an image, so I’m assuming it’s not a lot of stuff you need to extract, pages and pages or some such. You could even use the snipping tool, and only put that in OneNote, and then extract text from image.

SpaceLobster · November 16, 2020, 7:37pm

You need ocr software. Google, or your scanner may have a utility.

meep · November 16, 2020, 9:45pm

Yeah, I often drop images into OneNote and then right-click: “Copy text from picture”

It does a so-so job.

soyleche · November 16, 2020, 9:46pm

I just tried that and the couldn’t find a “Copy text from picture” option when I right-click.

meep · November 16, 2020, 9:50pm

Example:

meep · November 16, 2020, 9:51pm

I have Office 365 on Windows

soyleche · November 16, 2020, 10:18pm

Yeah - that option doesn’t show up for me. I’ve tried in on Windows and Mac. Maybe I’m uploading the file to OneNote wrong.

Celalta · November 16, 2020, 10:59pm

I’m generally not uploading a file, I’m taking a picture with the snipping tool and copy/pasting it in, then doing the right click copy text from picture as shown in the image above.

meep · November 17, 2020, 1:24am

Yeah, I take a screenshot and paste the bit I want to extract into OneNote as a picture. I don’t open it as a file, or any such thing.

soyleche · November 17, 2020, 1:34am

I tried that and it’s still not working. I can get it to work with different pictures, but not with screenshots of this particular pdf.

Ultimately, it’s not really that important. Thanks for the ideas.

meep · November 17, 2020, 11:25am

Sometimes OneNote doesn’t detect the text. I usually have to manually repair bits of even the clearest text in a picture. Their OCR isn’t all there yet.