Extract highlighted text from pdf

Ok, after looking I found a solution for exporting highlighted text from a pdf to a text file. Is not very hard:. First, you highlight your text with the tool you like to use in my case, I highlight while I'm reading on an iPad using Goodreader app.

Transfer your pdf to a computer and open it using Skim a pdf reader, free and easy to find on the web. It will export you a list of your highlighted text. Once opened this list can be exported again to a txt format file. Here is an example which works with this pdf file :. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Asked 9 years, 11 months ago. Active 1 year, 4 months ago. Viewed 15k times. Martin Thoma k gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Thanks for the answer. I also found another way to solve this by a little bit long way : Sticky notes that is created by Adobe Reader is easy to parse because sticky notes are appended to pdf files with both content and position information, but for highlights there is only rectangle infromation I should extract text by location.

So I have to write some code for it. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Is not very hard: First, you highlight your text with the tool you like to use in my case, I highlight while I'm reading on an iPad using Goodreader app. Not much work to do, and the result is fantastic. But if anyone wants to take the same path and develop from scratch, I can help with pointers, if you email me Alex at wowpdfextractor gmail.

I have been a regular visitor of coding sites including stackexchange and stackoverflow till now but this is my first post here :. I have used all the tools above, however, found Sumnotes to be the easiest one to use. The key is it's on cloud and you don't need to download anything. The extractions are shown to you within seconds and you have an option of exporting it to txt, Word, Evernote or even just email it to yourself after you sign up for free! Here is a free and easy to use solution -- an Acrobat Add-on written in JavaScript.

To "extract" without copying to the comment boxes: extract highlighted data, then close-without-saving the PDF file. It is possible to write a wrapper and make it a standalone software to "process several PDF files at once" -- but it is not capable of doing that for now. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 7 years, 6 months ago. Active 1 year, 1 month ago. Viewed 19k times. Improve this question. Community Bot 1. Franck Dernoncourt Franck Dernoncourt Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. There is a solution on sourceforge. Improve this answer. Worked for me. I found only this free tool that worked. Only small issue is that the whole line is extracted ignoring the word from which highlight was started.

I have added the following features in it: Provision to copy old highlight texts to comment pop ups retroactively that is you had not made the setting explained above before making the comment.

Provision to copy highlight texts to comment pop ups for highlights made from a tablet. Provision to specify delimiters in the comment generator. Single file processing and bulk processing. If anybody is still looking for this requirement, you may try it Alex Alex 69 4 4 bronze badges. Steve Barnes Steve Barnes