For one pdf that was dimmed when selected under preview, presumably because of copyright, I was able to save this to textedit by opening it in Adobe Reader instead of preview. Instead of arrow right once to go to Adobe Reader as the first menu option and going down to services (in which the textedit and "new window containing selection" are grayed, arrow right a second time to the File menu, and choose the option "save as text", and the text selected with command-a could be saved into a text file. The sample this worked for was a downloadable copy of Audiofile magazine, so I don't know whether this is a general solution.
Cheers, Esther On Tuesday, March 14, 2006, at 07:45PM, Cheryl Homiak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I just went hunting for this in the archives this afternoon. Putting >together what I read there and my own experimentation, I was able to >convert to text. However, this won't work for some pdfs, probably >because they are copyrighted. If the selection you want is dimmed, >you'll know that either you haven't selected the text (see below) or >you can't make a text file. > > >What worked for me is the following: >1. Open the file in preview. >2. Press command-a to select all text. >3. Press vokeys-m to go into menus. >4. Arrow right once to preview and then down to services. >5. Arrow right at services and go down to textedit and arrow right >there again. >6. You should find an item "new window containing selection". (Do not >choose "open selected file". Do vokeys-space on "open selection in >new window" and the file should be opened in textedit. You may have >to use command-tab to go over to textedit; you may not get verbal >confirmation that the selection is in textedit; you may just find >that the menu has closed and you are in preview; in that case holding >command command down and repeatedly pressing tab will take you >through your open applications so you can see if textedit is open >with your text.
