Missing Tool in Acrobat/Adobe Reader

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A workmate asked me how to copy columns from PDF to TXT. I referred him to the Column Select Tool, but to my astonishment it wasn’t there in version 6 of Adobe Reader!!!!

I really don’t pay much attention to Acrobat/Adobe Reader updates. I tend to stick to rather older versions because they are faster. But I’ve seen lots of discussions here and wondered whether you had noticed the lack of this really useful tool.

For those who hadn’t ever noticed it used to exist, you can download e.g. version 4 from http://www.oldversion.com[/url%5D. It’s right there.

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Or the author has protected the document so you can NOT copy his/her data.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Hi Dave,

Well it’s not the case. I can select text, but not a certain column. In fact, I can select / copy the same column in the same document using the Column Select Tool in Acrobat Reader 4.0.

Even when it were the case, I’d expect the tool to appear grayed out instead of not appearing at all… But as far as I’ve checked, it’s not there!!

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Hi Dave,

AR7 still has the full text/table/image copy & paste fucntions of previous versions, though the tools are different. It also has a save as text option for extracting all the text from an unprotected pdf.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Perhaps the section “To select a column of text:” on this page will help.

Alan

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So it seems it’s still there… I wouldn’t have thought a depressed Alt key would trigger the Column Select Tool.
I’ll try the tip tomorrow at work (still have AR 4.0 at home).

Thanks!

Edited to add: the way this tool works is reminiscent of MS Word’s ability to select a block of text by holding the Alt key. I throw in the tip just in case someone didn’t know it.

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