Trouble with line breaks copypasting from PDF Thread poster: Paolo Valenti
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Paolo Valenti 
Switzerland
Local time: 07:36
German to Italian
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Hi everyone, when I copy and paste texts from PDF into word there are always those bloody line breaks in correspondence to the PDF lines and they screw up all the CAT process. I can manually reformat short texts, but it is suicidal for long ones. Do you know a system to eliminate line breaks in whole word documents and are able to explain it to a idiot?
Thank you, Paolo Valenti
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Hi,
Using some OCR software (such as Abbyy or Omnipage) might solve your problem. It should recognize the text in your PDF document and save it as a TXT or DOC file. Typically, line breaks will be removed. You should give it a try.
Regards,
Luciano
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In most cases Acrobat 6.0 will let you get rid of unwanted carriage by saving file as rtf.
| | | | | Source files | Dec 14, 2004 |
Hello,
ask your client for the source files.
With kind regards
Hans
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Textklick
Local time: 06:36
German to English
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In memoriam | No problem :-) | Dec 14, 2004 |
If the PDF is non-extractable, then try OCR, although it doesn't work well if the PDF is made from a fax or some other messy source ;-(.
Otherwise, there are many tools (some of which are freeware) which can do this for you. Check some of the sites at: http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=pdf%20conversion&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=
I don't... See more If the PDF is non-extractable, then try OCR, although it doesn't work well if the PDF is made from a fax or some other messy source ;-(.
Otherwise, there are many tools (some of which are freeware) which can do this for you. Check some of the sites at: http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=pdf%20conversion&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=
I don't have any of these tools, but I am sure other colleagues will follow on with their specific recommendations.
Asking the client for the source files is a good idea, but in my experience they are seldom available.
HTH
Chris
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| | | | Lia Fail (X)
Spain
Local time: 07:36
Spanish to English
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| Find and replace? | Dec 14, 2004 |
Paolo Valenti wrote:
...a system to eliminate line breaks in whole word documents and are able to explain it to a idiot...
I am not sure if you are referring to another software or simply to a quicker way to manually deal with paragraph marks at the end of each line, i.e. that appear within sentences.
SO, at the risk of spelling out something you already know:-)
Go to the FIND & REPLACE function
- insert in FIND box, 2 paragraph mark symbols
- insert in REPLACE box, XXX (or any other non-standard word)
This will replace all double paragraph marks representing real paragraph breaks (You might also have to do this for instances of 3 paragraph marks, depending how the text is formatted)
Now do a FIND & REPLACE substituting all the remaining paragraph marks with a space.
Finally, do a FIND & REPLACE re-substituting all the XXX with a paragraph mark.
You still might have to do some reformatting, but at least from a CAT perspective, you'll have correct sentence segments.
[Edited at 2004-12-14 18:48]
| | | | Robert Tucker (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:36
German to English
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You will probably find that pdftotext tools (there's a free one at: www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html) will pull the text out of the pdf without too many paragraph marks - it will probably be necessary to insert some.
(Columns may become paragraphs etc, but it's cheaper than buying a full-blown pdf to .doc converter, though you may want to check those out, of course)
| | | | Paolo Valenti
Switzerland
Local time: 07:36
German to Italian
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TOPIC STARTER | Thanks to everyone! | Dec 17, 2004 |
I've really appreciated your help. Now it's time for some experimentations...
Paolo Valenti
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| Have also a look here: | Dec 17, 2004 |
We are just discussing this issue also here:
http://www.proz.com/topic/27682
Maybe you'll find a prgram that suits your needs.
| | | | | why not with Wordfast's PlusTools? | Dec 18, 2004 |
Paolo Valenti wrote:
Hi everyone, when I copy and paste texts from PDF into word there are always those bloody line breaks in correspondence to the PDF lines and they screw up all the CAT process.
Simply, I found out that the best and cleanest, and safest method is to use PlusTools by Wordfast. Anyhow, Wordfast can be downloaded and used for small projects for free, alongside with PlusTools which are always free. PlusTools is a macro, as well, like Wordfast.
Firstly, extract text from PDF, by means of Wordfast (or Plustools, I can't remember now). Then make PlusTools correct the text: all those CR, and similar. The process is flawless and smooth.
D
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