How to Convert PDF to Text on Mac OS X Using Automator

How to convert a PDF document to text format on Mac OS X using Automator. This conversion will convert PDF text and retain all of the rich formatting. Automator does not convert PDF images into Word, Pages or text format though so you’ll have to check out a third party application for that.

Zamzar (free converter):
http://www.zamzar.com/

SolidDocuments (paid converter):
http://www.soliddocuments.com/

Mac OS X Tutorials Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

Published by Anson Alexander from http://AnsonAlex.com

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Closed Caption:

hello everyone this is anson from Ansan
Alex . common in this video I'm going to
show you how you can convert the text in
a PDF to actual text format and reserve
the formatting so bold italic stuff all
of that sort of thing on a Mac computer
running OS 10 now there's actually a
built-in applications on Mac called
automator and we can build our own
little app which really isn't that
complicated that will allow us to
extract the text from a PDF document and
then we can paste that text into
Microsoft Word or pages or whatever word
processing program that we're going to
use now i do want to mention that this
will not extract images from your PDF
files if you want to extract images
you're going to have to use a different
application and before actually show you
how to use automated i just want to show
you real quick
two of the options you have for fully
converting PDF including text and images
there's a free program online that you
can use and it's here we pull it up it's
actually called zamzar zamzar however
you want to pronounce that and all you
have to do is upload your file choose
the format that you want to convert it
to an end to your email address and
we'll send you a link to download your
converted file now I have a resume on my
desktop here it's an old resume from
2013 and actually tried using the sams
our appt with this resume it does
convert all the texts and it brings in
the images but all the formatting is
messed up in fact on the top part of the
page here all the text is not there but
all of these lines and images and areas
to put texture here and then only on the
second page do you start to see the text
so honestly in my opinion it didn't work
it almost made it more of a hassle than
it was to begin with but you can try
that out if you have a document PDF
that's only text doesn't have much
formatting and images zamzar might work
for you
the other application that you might
want to try is actually a professional
application that costs money
it's called solid documents you can buy
it for mac OS 10 and it does a really
good job of converting pdfs into pages
format or word format in keeping all of
that formatting and all the images
within the document but let's take a
look at how we can use automator just to
get that formatted text from a PDF so
again i have this PDF here on my desktop
that's the one that we're going to
convert into a
text document so to get started we need
to open up automator on our mac computer
i'm going to do that just by searching
spotlight i'm going to click on
spotlight and i'm going to search for
automator and you'll notice that it
comes up in my list i'm just going to
click to open automator now it's asking
me where I want to save my project I can
just choose to save it on the desktop
i'm going to hit done and i'm going to
go up to file I'm going to hit New you
might have seen this screen when you
first open automated but I've been
playing around with it a little bit
today so I wasn't at the initial opening
screen this is what the screen should
look like and when the screen comes up
what we're going to do is we're going to
create a workflow so we're going to
click Choose right here there's a lot of
things we can do with automator so try
not to get distracted by all the options
you have in here and if you just follow
along with what i do in the video you
should be able to convert your PDF
documents into text format so we need to
create our own application to do that we
need to drag some of these actions over
here on the left over to the right so
what we're going to do is first of all
we're going to click on files and
folders over here on the left and then
this option that says ask finder for
items were going to drag that option
over here to the right
now on the left side of our screen we're
going to click on pdfs we're going to
choose extract PDF text and you're going
to drag that over here to the right just
below the ask for finer item so we have
these two items over here on the right
now we want to do is when it says output
we want to change this to rich text we
want all the formatting in our text to
be preserved when we convert it into a
text document from a PDF you can choose
where you want the file to be saved to
once you converter we can keep that as
the desktop for now and we can choose
the same name as the input name so it's
just going to have the exact same name
as the document but instead of . PDF is
going to be dot RTF for a rich text file
now this is our application so what we
want to do is we actually want to save
this application so i'm going to go up
to file and I'm going to click Save and
we're going to save it on my desktop and
i'm going to college we want to make
sure that the file format is application
not workflow so make sure you change
that first then go ahead and call it
whatever is descriptive for you i'm
going to call it PDF to text converter
i'm going to click save now we can go
ahead and we can quit out of automator
so i'm going to go up to automator and
I'm going to quit on my desktop I now
have my appt the PDF to text converter
app going to double click on the app
it's going to ask me to select a file
because we told it we want finder to ask
us a file to convert so i have this PDF
file here my desktop but I want to
convert i'm going to click Choose on
that it's going to go through this
process and you can see automatically I
now have a rich text file here my
desktop so let's take a look at these
two files if i open up this PDF in
preview here it looks like snow resume
but you can see I've got to know my
employment history all that on here it's
pretty nicely formatted was going to
quit out of previous that's what it
looks like in preview now the rich text
file doesn't have any of the images but
it does have all the formatting so you
can see the bold you can see the
bulleted lists you can see all the
formatting here now I can go ahead and I
could copy all of this information here
let's say go up to right about here so
I'm just going to command C to copy and
I could open up an application such as
pages i could create a new document here
in pages just a blank document and now I
could paste all this text into pages and
I have retained all of my formatting i
could go ahead and I could start spacing
this out a little and and changing it
however I want but we were able to
convert text from a PDF into text format
and retain all that formatting with a
free application on our Mac os10
computer called automator again if
you're looking to convert your entire
PDF including images you're going to
have to look for a third party program
it's really not that easy to do to
convert text from a PDF into a text
document because essentially a PDF is
just an image so you have to have a very
powerful program that can go in and read
and image and extract text and turn into
actual text on a computer so it's not as
simple as it may seem
but there are third-party applications
that do do it again the free one is
zamzar and then the paid one is solid
documents but automator works great if
you're just trying to get that text so i
hope you found this video helpful if you
did I would really appreciate a thumbs
up here on YouTube and if you want to
see more technology tips and tutorials
remember to subscribe to my youtube
channel that's all i have for you for
today this is anson from and Alex . com