# 56 Gary.
A sensible response at last! Thanks.

#31, ebax: Right on the money!

Sometimes single-purpose is better, and it looks like this is one of those times. Thanks for what I know will be a very useful program!

Same problem as #39 - licensed email and registration code do not work on a Mac.

Edited to Add prior #46 - I tried to save the same file as Text??

Might as well be hieroglyphics - sample
鶼꾄誨븒䓘ᶊ䎏獦

Not sure how to use this? (I thought it was supposed to convert a PDF to Text?)

I got the information shown below - but when I do what it says (open the PDF and try to Print) it created another PDF but still not TEXT and not search-able?

Congratulations!
You've successfully installed FoxTab PDF Converter.
FoxTab PDF Converter is installed as a virtual printer, so now you can conveniently convert any document from virtually any Windows application (Word, Excel, FireFox, PowerPoint, text file, etc...) to PDF format in just few clicks.
Get a press-ready, high quality, color, searchable PDF file.

>>> This is how you doing it:
1. Open the document you wish to convert.
2. Click the "Print" button.
3. Type in the destination PDF file name and select your PDF options.

That is it! The document will be printed via the "FoxTab PDF Converter" virtual printer and saved as PDF. This way you can easily convert any webpage, picture and virtually any printable media.Enjoy!
What can you do?

* Easily create PDF files from any program that is able to print.
* Extract data from almost any type of PDF file
* Sign your PDF files.
* Easy-to-use!

To #3, I'd like to know how long you've been using keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste from Adobe Reader when no one else can do so?

Apparently, by the response to your post, there are at least 43 people who have never tried it.

Close but no cigar.

I tried this on a couple of "Troublesome" PDFs, and it failed miserably. I have converted both of these PDFs numerous times, trying to find something that will get the format to a more readable state. It simply refused to convert the first one, a 442-page collection of mini-biographies. Simpo converts the second one, an economic paper, but it has a terrible time with the two-column format, rendering the output nearly unreadable.

I get better, although mediocre, results converting with the generic PDF converter in the free program Calibre.

Just as a test, I tried it with smaller (but still multipage) and simpler PDFs, and it gives mediocre results. I have uninstalled Simpo from my machine.

I downloaded and installed. Appeared to activate but when I tried to convert a document it would only convert 2 pages and wanted me to purchase the software. :-( Uninstalled.

Replying to Rob comment #5:

If you choose the programs from somepdf.com instead of the Simpo, it is NOT necessary to give somepdf.com your email address. Simply go to somepdf.com/download to get the files you want.

Installed succesfully. Tried to get the text from an user manual pdf. The result was incredible garbage. Letters, words alternating with empty spaces... nothing readable.

Worked well in win7 home. Converted 495 page pdf (php for dummies) in about 2-3 seconds. Format looks good.

Windows 7:
If I enter an output path beyond the location of the source pdf file, the application creates n! (factorial) subdirectories -- one for each possible substring in the subpath name !?!

What is up with that???

To Mac users, instructions for e-mail and registration codes are in the ReadMe document in the ZIP file.

HJB #29.
It may be worth your while to read some factual documentation regarding PDF files.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format#File_structure

Julia #34
Thanks for the comparisons and a most informative write-up.

Flacadoo #45
Other than tables it does preserve the layout of the document to a remarkable degree, hence it is partially formatted but most certainly not totally unformatted.
As to your advice of using PDF to Word programs, in general they produce documents that look like they were done by Blind Pew on Crack.

Well, I don't think this will be a much used program for me. It converted, but the PDF file had two columns of text on the first page and the conversion is all muddled with some text from the second column appearing on the left side before the left column's text even starts. Makes for a very hard read unless you have the PDF file handy to figure out what goes where. So why bother even converting.
Thanks, but no thanks. :(

sorry, tried a few things...one with jpegs embedded and another that was all text. Neither converted.

@31: This product maintains original pdf formating (but without images etc), cut & paste doesn’t"
"Original pdf formatting"? Not at all. When you say "without images etc", the "etc" contains quite a lot of formatting.

@40: "producers beautifully formatted text"
It produces an UNformatted PLAIN text. If you expect formatted text, consider their PDF to Word program.

@41: "It converts document layout (e. g. tables) correctly"
No it does not. It creates a plain text file. Even the Simpo web site says that tables are not retained.

There's too many odd artifacts to make the conversion useful beyond cut/paste. Uninstalling.

installed no problem, however when converting a large pdf i get a blank notepad file as a result. any ideas?

From the converted Simpo User pdf...

Simpo PDF to Text works as a standalone converter, so you needn’t extra install Adobe® Acrobat or

Adobe® Reader software before converting PDF to Text.

High Compatibility

Why PDF to Text? That’s because text files are compatible with DOS/Windows, UNIX and Mac

Free online converter: http://www.convertfiles.com/
ie, text to doc. Result may vary.

It converts document layout (e. g. tables) correctly, so that's why it's better than copy/paste and Adobe Reader's "Save as text".
Also, you can select a text from the whole table (and e.g. convert upper-case to lower-case), which you cannot do with free Sun PDF Import Extension (to OpenOffice).
Thumbs up!

A beautifully simple program to install and register that producers beautifully formatted text. It is so well formatted that the output is often simpler to convert to Word than many PDF to word converters which often make a total hash of it.
Initially I didn't think this would be any used me as I wrote a PDF search program a number of years ago; to do this it had to extract the text from the PDF file which is often compressed. My extracted results contained no formatting and it was a devil a job to get it back looking similar to the original PDF file. The quality of output from this program was a real eye-opener.
For those interested in PDF files an excellent free program called PDFill PDF Tools it has many useful functions.
http://www.pdfill.com/pdf_tools_free.html

Help wanted with installation on a MAC.

What e-mail and what key should I use with installation on a MAC. The data of the Windows installation are not accepted.

Hey hjb 32# try the pdf password remover. This worked for me and i have decrypted many encrypted pdf files with this tool. Give it a try.

works good on win7 x32. no 2-page limit here when registered.

thanks gaotd

Tried out the software. It does do a fast convert to text and saves the .txt file to a folder automatically, so while you can do it all yourself in most instances with copy/paste, this is a faster method because it is incorporating the steps. The text file it turned out retained the sentence structures, which was good.

I was interested in the program because I wanted to see if I could take the resulting .txt file, plug it into my Atlantis word processor and turn it into an .epub file. However, when I did so, I got sentences that looked like this:

"One, you’re powerful. Two, you’re tenacious. And three, you’ve"

which did me no good.

This product does a good job of using plain text to try to reproduce what the original document looked like. It is limited by the formatting limitations of plain text. If you want a plain text version of the original, this is fine. It can give a much more legible product than cut and paste if the original document is highly formatted.

Note, however, that it does not work with a pdf that is just a graphic and that has no embedded text.

If you just want to capture the text and reformat it to your own liking, then this product may make the task a bit more difficult. In order to compensate for the lack of formatting functions in plain text, it inserts spaces, for example, instead of tabs or centering or right justifying. The result is that you may have to delete all of those spaces in order to format the document as you wish.

If you want to retain as much of the formatting as possible, and the document started out as a Word or Excel digital document, then you are far better off using a program that can simply revert the pdf to its original type.

Simpo PDF to Text Converter installed very quickly and easily. Registration was speeded up by Simpo Technologies having had the forethought and consideration to provide their own e-mail address and a pre-arranged key for registering this GOTD giveaway. This was a classy touch, which I hope will set a precedent for other developers whose usual registration process requires an email address.

To evaluate the quality of the output, I converted a couple of PDF files using both Simpo PDF to Text Converter and a previous giveaway, Wondershare PDF Converter (which also provides conversions to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Epub and HTML). My initial assumption was I'd probably be uninstalling Simpo again quickly, since it only offers a single conversion mode. However, this was far from being the case.

The text produced by Simpo was very different to the text produced by Wondershare. Neither product is configurable, so you simply get what you're given.

Simpo produces a clean, highly readable output which resembles the layout of the original PDF, obviously complete with line breaks. It is particularly useful for preserving the layout of sections of quoted code. Although I would have liked Simpo to offer a setting for output without preserved layout, I'm very pleased with what it does offer.

Wondershare produces output with no line breaks, but unfortunately also with all sorts of unwanted added notations and peculiarities (for example, spaces are added before and after every apostrophe). Unlike Simpo's output, you'd need to do a lot of extra work on the result to make it readable.

On speed and reliability, Simpo won hands down. It ran very quickly and produced complete results in a couple of seconds, even for a 200 page document, whereas Wondershare struggled for 2-3 minutes with the same long document and only managed to convert the first 45 pages.

Simpo PDF to Text Converter is a definite keeper. I'll be keeping Wondershare PDF Converter only because it does an excellent job of converting to Word, and offers several other formats too. On PDF to text conversion, Wondershare doesn't hold a candle to Simpo.

Two things I'd like to see Simpo introduce:

- The option to choose your output folder during installation. Like many converters, this program creates its own folder under My Documents (PDF2Text Output) without asking. Also like many converters, this program allows you to select an alternative output folder while the program is running. Unlike many converters, this program does not remember the previous folder used, and recreates My Documents\PDF2Text Output every time it is run.

- The option to generate output text without line breaks and other layout.

Thanks to Simpo Technologies and GOTD for this great giveaway.

What e-mail adress and key should be entered when installing on a MAC?

Footnote to foregoing comment: As some others have noted there are some programs that will crack the password on a pdf that has been restricted or protected by a password. Not all work equally well and none of them can crack good encryption, if the pdf is encrypted.

Too bad most GAOTD 'users' don't read! This product supports batch conversion, cut & paste doesn't! This product maintains original pdf formating (but without images etc), cut & paste doesn't. This program converts full PDF's not just 2 pages! Did you register as it says in readme.txt?
This program is very fast!
Simpo has other products that convert to different file formats, check their website!
Why do people buy MS Office when they can get Libre Office for free all the time?

simpo pdf 2 text: i installed and registered (which removes the 2 page limit). Works fine (much like copy and paste) on pdf files that allow copy and paste. For pdf files that are images (ie you cannot select and copy text), it did not work at all (i tried a few). So, maybe better format preservation than copy and paste, but otherwise no real value for me. Not OCR type tool. Thanks anyway - some may like it.

pdfs come in several different flavors:

1. Totally graphic - Even text is just a picture of the alpha and numeric characters. Fine to read; however, you cannot use the search functions with it, and you cannot copy and paste portions of it. In short, it behaves like a picture if you want to do something with it.

2. Same as (1), but there is imbedded in the back ground a plain text version that has been produced from the graphic by OCR. If you do a search or a copy and paste, those functions are working with the imbedded plain text and not with the graphic. Even the best OCR programs make mistakes, depending upon the quality of the graphic, the type of font in the graphic, and whether there are any irrelevant marks on the graphic. The result is that you may see what, to your eye, is clearly a word, such as "beauty" but the OCR saw it as "bratty". The result is that when you highlight beauty, the subsequent paste is bratty.

3. The pdf started out like (1), but, instead of putting the text in the background, the program was instructed to change it into text and discard the graphic. A further instruction may have attempted to preserve the formatting. More often than not, such pdf text will have typographical and formatting errors. However, when you do a search or a cut and paste, what you see is what you get.

4. (1), (2) and (3) are pdfs that started out as paper, and were converted to graphic pdfs. However, if a digital document is created in a text-based program, such as WORD or Excel or anything that uses actual text, and then a pdf is created from that by any good pdf program, such as Acrobat, then we have a totally different situation from 1, 2 and 3. The text and formatting can be copied and pasted or saved as, and can be searched, all like the original document.

5. Exception! Adobe and most other pdf creator programs give the author the ability to lock and/or encrypt all of the various formats (1, 2,3 and 4). If some features, such as printing or copying, is locked, then efforts to manipulate the text will fail unless you have a password to unlock. You may not even be able to open the pdf without a password. When you try to copy from such a pdf, you may get nothing or you may get garbage.

Some of the various pdf manipulation utilities fail to make clear to us exactly where their product falls within the pdf spectrum. The result is a lot of wasted time and, possibly, a lot of mistakes in situations that are personally or commercially important.

I should note that there are some competitors that provide some features that are better than or not available within Adobe Acrobat. For example some give you more flexibility in marking up a pdf or in saving just the marked parts of a pdf. Those utilities are very helpful. Just make sure that the result is as you expected if you thereafter open the document in an Adobe product. You have to think about that if you are sending it to someone who is using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat reader.

Too bad that the producers of this program in "giving it away" had not thought to make sure that they were giving a full program rather than one that just does "two pages" of a file. A rather stingy "giveaway".

With a .pdf open, you click on Edit, Select All and the right-click on the highlighted text, select copy and then paste it in Notepad or Word works but this is just for Notepad and formats it. Look at this example:
Original PDF - http://imgur.com/2T2dW
Manually pasted into Notepad - http://imgur.com/1wgDg
Simpo PDF to Text Converter - http://imgur.com/DOz5z
Manually pasted into Word - http://imgur.com/0oy72

Note that Simpo spaced the sub-chapters correctly. Even #16 / dieseldude's 'save as' method didn't space the sub-chapters.
It's a great program for converting .pdf files into text that you may just want a part of the file to quickly access since Notepad opens so fast. A good example would be an ebook about web design but you just want quick access to the example chapter for common XHTML codes.
My only suggestion is to add the option to convert to Word documents. (Plus Open Source document extensions.)

#19 Corno - Anything that you can print on paper can be scanned back into the PC and be read by OCR software. Copy protected or not.

Just like the only 100% way to stay free of any hacker is to turn your PC off... or 99% way is to stay away from the internet and PC repair ppl.

let's see how many 1 trick ponies we can make out of a good converter app and sell them all individually at the price of a good converter! No thanks. Just sell the Ultimate at a good price and stop jacking us all around

Well, guys, the PDFs I usually work with don't permit copy and paste, but apparently this does not hold good for all PDFs, given the amount of claims above. Still, I prefer professional software like Abbyy or Adobe, especially if you need OCR facility, which however is almost never given away for free.

Works, but not much better than Adobe Reader's "Save As" function.

You can copy text from protected pdf files. There is a tool called pdf password remover. As the name suggests it removes password from pdf files. But the software is not free. The trial version can be used to unprotect half of the pdf file. ie, if the pdf file has 20 pages, it will unprotect the first 10. Find the software here www.verypdf.com

#13 You're wrong (tested on Sumatra PDF wich is a PDF reader). You can COP all the text that do you want in SUMATRA (and I guess adobe reader) and then paste it to notepad or something similar.

#13 It presumably depends on the security settings in the pdf. I tried to convert a brochure (no security) with many photos and multiple columns with this software and compared output with copy/paste to notepad. Copy/paste worked marginally better on this single test, but I will keep for a while to test on simpler layouts and protected pdfs.

#13 I always use copy and paste as #3 says, unless the pdf is protected from copy.

I have found that with copying and pasting the formatting (font, spacing, paragraphs etc) often change and images are not always collected and put in the right place. Most software that can convert from PDF to Word (text) do a much better job that simply copying and pasting.

#13 Corno - Actually you can copy/paste from a PDF. Most PDF readers have a Select tool.

Just installed and registered the software (Vista 32bit) and it was smooth as silk, then tried a conversion. The conversion was very quick, and the converted text file maintained most of the PDF text formatting. As much as could be expected in a text file. Works as advertised.

I must say, though, that without the conversion of images or tables (which you can't do in a straight text file anyway) copy/paste does about the same job. For many, this will be a good alternative to doing it manually.

Why not simply use the File> Save As > Txt function in Reader rather than use the Mb's to install another program?

#3 Monty
You cannot copy and paste from a PDF.

What is it's use? Why don't simply copy-paste text from pdf? It will be more accurate than this. If the copy paste can't be done, it's better to use some professional ocr software like abbyy fine reader or omnipage for better result.

Installed,registered fine. Thanks GOTD and SIMPO TECH for making this available today. I have other converters but they don't like working with encrypted pdf's. The publisher hype (no offense intended) says this one works with encrypted files so I'm giving it a try. HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL