Travel Technology - Pulling certain pages out of PDFs

I am trying to figure out if this is possible without buying software to do it.

I have a PDF that has a background image, I need to copy a few pages out of it to keep for future reference. I try to "Select-All" on the page and copy/paste into another document but it copies the background.

Does anyone know how to pull out specific pages of a PDF and put them into another format when there is a dominant background image?

If all you want is the unformated text, you can do a "Select all", and paste it into a very simple text editor (textpad, wordpad, notepad, etc).

The formatting, including background, won't follow.

JP

If all you want is the unformated text, you can do a "Select all", and paste it into a very simple text editor (textpad, wordpad, notepad, etc).

The formatting, including background, won't follow.

JP

Yeah, I tried this but forgot to mention it above, this results in nothing being put into the text document.

Added: Wordpad will keep SOME of the formatting, mostly what's considered as "Rich text".

JP

Then that should mean that the text is actually graphics, not text.

Yeah, I tried this but forgot to mention it above, this results in nothing being put into the text document.

Does anyone know how to pull out specific pages of a PDF and put them into another format when there is a dominant background image?

Print to a (Postscript) file those specific pages. Use free Ghostview / Ghostscript to view it or convert it to a different format.

Do you have any ocr software? it may do it.

There is a text selection tool in the Adobe reader.

Also, in my version of the Adobe reader there's an option to "Save As..." both on the file menu and also with an icon of a floppy right next to the print icon. I'd use this and pick out the pages that you want to save.

(Actually, I have a PDF writer listed as a printer, but failing that I'd try the above.)

There is a text selection tool in the Adobe reader.
But if the PDF is the result of a scan, it is just a bitmap. There is no text that can be selected.

A PDF resulting from the scan needs to be processed by some OCR software (like that in the full Acrobat product) to produce text that can be selected.

Later versions of Acrobat offer a "save as" option. Save the pdf as a word document and voila, you have an editable text file.

I have a PDF that has a background image, I need to copy a few pages out of it to keep for future reference. I try to "Select-All" on the page and copy/paste into another document but it copies the background.You need to install a PDF print driver (e.g. CutePDF http://www.cutepdf.com/). Then, you can open the original file in Acrobat and Print just the page(s) you wish to keep.

You can use pdftk http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/ It's a freeware program that will let you easily split a page or a select group of pages into a new document as well as do alot more stuff with pdfs.

It a command line program that can run on just about anything.