If the PDF document is text-searchable (imbedded with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)), in Adobe select ‘Edit,’ then ‘Copy’ (or CTRL-C) and ‘Paste’ (or CTRL-V) within your desired program. Please note, if the PDF document is not text-searchable, copying text within the document is not possible. However, there are ways to convert a PDF image document to be text searchable with Adobe Pro software. Currently, PDF documents cannot be converted to OCR using Adobe Reader.

Within Adobe Pro, select ‘View’ from the drop-down menu, select ‘Tools’, then ‘Recognize Text.' Choose the desired pages to convert to OCR text-searchable format. Once the PDF document has been made text-searchable, you will have the ability to copy and paste from Adobe to your word processing software.