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    Unlocking read only PDF for editing Help

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by shasta7, Sep 20, 2011.

  1. shasta7

    shasta7 Notebook Evangelist

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    shasta7, Sep 20, 2011
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  2. Qing Dao

    Qing Dao Notebook Deity

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    Can't you save a copy and edit that?
     
    Qing Dao, Sep 20, 2011
    #2
  3. shasta7

    shasta7 Notebook Evangelist

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    No unless I am missing something. It is Pass protected from the source IE: read Only
     
    shasta7, Sep 20, 2011
    #3
  4. wittynorseman

    wittynorseman Notebook Consultant

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    Is there a link to this password protected PDF?
     
    wittynorseman, Sep 21, 2011
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  5. olyteddy

    olyteddy Notebook Deity

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    That seems pretty unreasonable, that someone would want to protect their intellectual property by preventing people from plagiarizing it. I would ask the author to remove such limitations immediately. In other words, do you have or can you get permission to edit it?
     
    olyteddy, Sep 21, 2011
    #5
  6. gmoneyphatstyle

    gmoneyphatstyle Notebook Deity

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    What you need is OCR, Optical Character Recognition.
    Some usb scanners, or printer scanners come with ocr software that lets you scan a printed page and convert the image to editable text. You may not have to actually scan the text, you may be able to feed the software the pdf, or images of the pages.

    Google docs also have ocr, I havn't tried it myself though.

    Let us know how it goes.
     
    gmoneyphatstyle, Sep 21, 2011
    #6
  7. shasta7

    shasta7 Notebook Evangelist

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    No joy :( the text is still scrambled. I tried the gmail view as html as well no luck there either.

    anybody got some other Idea. I can read the doc as presented just want to change some text in it to suit my purposes????

    Olyteddy:
    "That seems pretty unreasonable, that someone would want to protect their intellectual property by preventing people from plagiarizing it. I would ask the author to remove such limitations immediately. In other words, do you have or can you get permission to edit it?"

    In this context it is reasonable trust me. :) No I don't have Nor will permission be given, that being said I paid to have the file generated.
    __________________
     
    shasta7, Sep 22, 2011
    #7
  8. gmoneyphatstyle

    gmoneyphatstyle Notebook Deity

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    I'm not sure you understand what I meant.

    Go to your gmail inbox, click on documents in the upper left. That will take you to Google docs. Then upload the pdf file to google docs. It will ask you if you want to convert the file to google docs version, answer yes. Also answer yes to image and text conversion, I can't remember the exact wording of menu.

    I just did this with a screen capture with a bunch of text in it. It captured most of the text just fine.

    Let us know if you have any luck.
     
    gmoneyphatstyle, Sep 22, 2011
    #8
  9. Mindless Drone

    Mindless Drone Notebook Enthusiast

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    I thought adobe prided itself on the security of secure PDF's. I just thought it was not possible.
     
    Mindless Drone, Sep 23, 2011
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  10. shasta7

    shasta7 Notebook Evangelist

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    @ wittynorseman

    Have you had a chance to look @ the pm I sent you?
     
    shasta7, Sep 24, 2011
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  11. gmoneyphatstyle

    gmoneyphatstyle Notebook Deity

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    Dude,
    I just discovered that the OCR in Microsoft OneNote is waaaaaaay better than on google docs.

    If you have OneNote, do this:
    1- open the pdf
    2- print, choose print to OneNote
    3- OneNote will open. Right click on the image, choose "copy text from all the pages of the printout"
    4 - paste it into word, or excel, or whatever you want.

    I was amazed how accurate it was. It was not 100% maybe 95% accurate. Still very impressive.

    If you google free OCR there is a website claiming to do OCR for free. I wouldn't use it to scan personal info though, who knows who's on the other end.
     
    gmoneyphatstyle, Sep 29, 2011
    #11