# Solved: Copy and Paste From PDF Spacing Problem



## Aqua_Dragon (Aug 12, 2009)

Hello there. 

As with anyone else, Microsoft Word has been a decent word processor to get work done. In particular, work for my speech and debate team requires a relatively large amount of copy and pasting, especially from PDF's (Since they are typically more 'scholarly')

That being said, there is a problem I have with exactly that. When attempting to copy and paste text from a PDF document, sometimes the spacing will be messed up on the right, ending some sentences prematurely. An example: 

"Instead, they disarm honest citizens and make them more vulnerable to armed predators. The nonproliferation system is having a 
similar perverse effect. Such unsavory states as Iran and North Korea are 
well along the path to becoming nuclear-weapons powers while their 
more peaceful neighbors 
are hamstrung by the NPT from countering 
those moves. 

I would just like to know if there is some possible way I could get around this issue without having to always manually put the sentences back into place. A macro to solve this problem would be neato, but anything else also works.


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## ozziebeanie (Jun 24, 2009)

Copy the text, then open Word, put your cursor where you want the text to go, then go to edit then special paste a box will come up click on the option you want then click OK


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## Aqua_Dragon (Aug 12, 2009)

I'm not quite sure I follow. There is no special paste button.


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## ozziebeanie (Jun 24, 2009)

Aqua_Dragon said:


> I'm not quite sure I follow. There is no special paste button.


If you are using Word 2003 there is a menu bar at the top left of the page with the words File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools Table, Window, and Help

Go to the Edit Button and select Paste Special which should be just under Paste, if you are using 2007 I have not used that since my last job and can not remember where the options are, and I have not got my computer with me that has that version loaded. But the option should be there on version 2007 I dont think they took any features away


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## Aqua_Dragon (Aug 12, 2009)

Thanks for the reply. However, this does not solve the problem. I attempted every one of the different special paste's and they all kept the text the same way - except non formatted, which just changed the text into the default kind.

I want to change this

"Instead, they disarm honest citizens and make them more vulnerable to armed predators. The nonproliferation system is having a 
similar perverse effect. Such unsavory states as Iran and North Korea are 
well along the path to becoming nuclear-weapons powers while their 
more peaceful neighbors 
are hamstrung by the NPT from countering 
those moves. 

To this

"Instead, they disarm honest citizens and make them more vulnerable to armed predators. The nonproliferation system is having a similar perverse effect. Such unsavory states as Iran and North Korea are well along the path to becoming nuclear-weapons powers while their more peaceful neighbors are hamstrung by the NPT from countering those moves.


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## ozziebeanie (Jun 24, 2009)

Ok just been fiddling around with PDF's and copying to Word, select the text you want to copy from the PDF document, by highlighting it, then pressing on Ctrl + C

Then put the curser on the word document where you want to paste the text and press on Ctrl +V

I did it here, from PDF to Word and it worked, with same formatting that was in the PDF document, hope it does for you, and if not let us know


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## Aqua_Dragon (Aug 12, 2009)

Although it seems that it works with some PDF's, a couple, such as this one (Where that excerpt came from), leave the copy paste broken apart as in the original post.


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## ozziebeanie (Jun 24, 2009)

Just looked it up, as i dont know why it worked with some and not others but the last bit of this artical might be the reason
http://www.pdfzone.com/c/a/Tips/Copying-and-Pasting-PDF-Content-into-a-New-File/


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## Aqua_Dragon (Aug 12, 2009)

I don't think so. When it says that a security measure is put to stop copy pasting, it means in its entirety. As in, you can't even highlight anything. I know this because I've seen other PDF's with words that could not be highlighted at all, and these usually were scholarly articles on databases (A couple of them could actually be highlighted, but only a few).

Inside of Open Office (for my Mac), I managed to find a macro that quickly solved the problem by putting everything together and back to normal. This is why I am trying to see if there is something similar with Word.


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## ozziebeanie (Jun 24, 2009)

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1043909.html

http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/help/HA010429611033.aspx

http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=128

have to disapear for a while but these links i think cover what you want to do. BBl


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## DaveA (Nov 16, 1999)

Aqua_Dragon said:


> Although it seems that it works with some PDF's, a couple, such as this one (Where that excerpt came from), leave the copy paste broken apart as in the original post.


With this PDF file, each line is a separate "Paragraph" so you will get the missed up formatting. If you were to "Turn on" the non-printable character in Word you will see what I mean. This is controlled by the author when the pdf file is made.

I have found that if one has the no-printable characters on will save a lot of trouble shooting questions.


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## Aqua_Dragon (Aug 12, 2009)

@Ozzie
I don't think that will work too well since what Dave said is true. So long as those paragraphs remain part of formatting, creating a macro that is just a shortcut of the paste special won't really do anything.

@Dave
That's interesting. It explains why it persists to stay in that manner even with no-format pasting. But it doesn't answer the question - how can I get around this without having to manually erase each one every single time? A macro that would remove the paragraphs, or some other tool that I might not know about.


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## DaveA (Nov 16, 1999)

Yes, there are tricks you can do using the "Replace" function of Word, but you need to be very careful about the "Double" paragraph markers at the end of the true paragraph.


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## Aqua_Dragon (Aug 12, 2009)

Mind explaining what these tricks are? It doesn't seem like I can just copy and paste the paragraph icon into the replace dialog boxes.


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## DaveA (Nov 16, 1999)

Once you have the data pasted in, you need to change the double paragraph markers to to something different, I will use "ZZ" as i very seldom have 2 z's in a row. Then you can change the single paragraph marker to a space and then the "ZZ"s back to double markers.

You do this using the "Find and replace" function of word.


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## Aqua_Dragon (Aug 12, 2009)

Perfecto. Thank you very Dave for helping me find my answer, and you too Ozzie for helping out a bunch.


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