How can the data in this PDF be obtained in plain text?

In this file starting from page 5, a number of data rows are written. I need these rows in plain text format. How can I extract them?

TMOTTM

Posted 2013-02-25T14:09:07.160

Reputation: 123

Answers

You can convert the contents of a PDF to plain text utilizing pdftotext.

Just run pdftotext Appendix.pdf and it will spit out an Appendix.txt will all the plain-text in it.

Der Hochstapler

Posted 2013-02-25T14:09:07.160

Reputation: 77 228

pdftotext works, using the -raw option – TMOTTM – 2013-02-25T15:54:07.190

What's wrong with simply copying them?

Cartesian coordinates for all structures:

React

6 6.390727 0.132095 4.960391
6 5.969971 -1.321389 4.932512
8 6.229932 -2.095504 5.854485
7 5.288242 -1.652799 3.816634
6 4.675691 -2.942048 3.614359
6 3.234362 -2.800745 3.119131
6 3.107771 -2.046443 1.784738
8 3.907686 -1.094593 1.556228
8 2.188216 -2.443833 1.008985
6 -5.322697 -1.975980 -1.333635
6 -4.229638 -1.620947 -0.307343
16 -2.533574 -1.760488 -0.994608
6 8.431743 -0.064459 -3.050202
6 7.281182 -0.571938 -2.237196
6 7.017856 -0.342487 -0.904258
6 6.208644 -1.400670 -2.720284
7 5.852218 -0.976787 -0.527814

Karan

Posted 2013-02-25T14:09:07.160

Reputation: 51 857

i should have written that I of course tried to copy the text, which ended up messing up the columns. – TMOTTM – 2013-02-25T15:35:32.237

"Messing up" how exactly? As you can see above, they seem fine to me. – Karan – 2013-02-25T15:40:46.767

what viewer are you using from which you are copying the characters? In Preview on Mac OS X, using drag-copy-paste results in the column and row structure not being preserved. Instead, the characters from two or more lines would appear on a single line. – TMOTTM – 2013-02-25T18:08:59.183

I use Sumatra, but they don't seem to have a version for OS X. – Karan – 2013-02-25T20:31:27.083

Save document to local machine.
http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf-to-word-converter/ will convert pdf to Word. Larger documents may only be partially converted, so you may have to either convert it in blocks.
In Word '07, File --> Options --> Advanced --> "Pasting within document" and "pasting between documents," set to "keep text only."
Cut/paste data in one document into itself, cut/paste from other documents into 1st documents.

After this, you should have 1 big word document in plain text.

Brian Daniels

Posted 2013-02-25T14:09:07.160

Reputation: 112