How do I select text in pdf?

[Thora 1]

I just want to copy a quote from the pdf that is attached to my note - in fact I don't want this note, I just wanted to read and highlight the document and copy from it BUT THAT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE.

I PAID FOR A YEARLY PERSONAL PLAN, HOW DO I SELECT AND COPY BASIC TEXT FROM PDF? 

Why are there dozens of people asking the same thing all over this and other user forums and Evernote does not reply? 

What did I just pay for if not these BASIC features?

[Mike P 2,642]

27 minutes ago, Thora said:

HOW DO I SELECT AND COPY BASIC TEXT FROM PDF? 

For me I just highlight the text, press ctrl+C to copy and then ctrl+V to paste it.

If this isn't working for you, why don't you just open the pdf in the default pdf viewer on your system by double clicking it. Then if that still doesn't work you will have a whole lot of other people to shout at.

 

[gazumped 11,666]

This might help too..  Annotate images and PDFs

[Boot17 1,450]

As @Mike P was saying, if you display the PDF inline, then you can copy text from a PDF right within Evernote with Ctrl-C, or with right-clicking on selected text and then choosing 'Copy' from the popup menu like this:

To display the PDF inline like that you might have to click on the 3 dots from the popup menu and then select to view as 'Single Page' or 'All Pages' like this:

[Thora 1]

None of the answers have helped. The options you talk about are not available in the pc version. I used these features in Evernote on my mac a couple of years ago but now on a PC none of the options are available.

NB I can easily highlight through Acrobat Reader but Evernote treats the document like it's an image and doesn't offer ANY options to select, search or highlight. These options are simply not there, even though I have an active subscription.

I saw elsewhere on the web that people were complaining about these features missing in the latest PC version.

What you guys see on your screen is simply not available on my screen, even though I am logged in to Evernote with my subscription. See attached screenshot.

p.s. I can't even see the page number. 

p.p.s. go ahead and try to search for "select text evernote pdf" or similar, look at what comes up, no solutions from the company that address the issue but multiple customers reporting that they can't highlight, search or copy. 

---- The Inline view doesn't work because it's a long file and I simply cannot browse page by page through 400 pages, I need to be able to scroll vertically through the document as you would with a regular word document. I have yet to find that option for the inlay. It is unusable if I have to browse 400 pages one by one in a side view. The inlay option does not offer vertical scrolling like the screenshot below.

[Powerfab 43]

Works fine for me in the pc version.

Right click on the .pdf within your Evernote note and select open from the right click menu. 
It will then either open in your browser or in Adobe Acrobat dependent on what windows system defaults you have. From there you can highlight the text and copy and paste to your hearts content. 

In your screnshot you're editing the pdf in the "skitch" viewer. Can't say I've ever found it to be particularly useful. 

[gazumped 11,666]

Looks like what you have is a basic PDF file which is just a series of images of the pages of your document.  It's possible to OCR (optical character read) those pages into a searchable PDF so that you can find and highlight individual words.

This is a PDF file I have in my database,  opened in an external PDF reader.  I can copy the yellow highlighted area.

[Thora 1]

My file is NOT AN IMAGE, it is a regular text pdf file that I can highlight using other applications. 

I used to be able to highlight text in pdf files from within Everenote where I could scroll it vertically, not page by page like here. That is useless when you're working with long documents and you need to go to page 137 or 355 quickly, the inlay view only offers one page at a time scrolling. See new screenshot.

If I have to use a new app to edit then more than half of what I used Evernote for is gone. The incentive to pay for this app is nonexistant at the moment, other free apps offer to do the same thing like Samsung Notes and there I would highlight through Acrobat or Edge or similar.

How do I get out of the Skitch viewer - or - how can I browse like below but vertically. This used to be all available within the same pdf editor on my mac but this new version does not do that. I'm not clicking 155 times to get to page 155 as I would have to do in the editor below. 

[Thora 1]

Try typing anything relating to my problem into the "Help" field - nothing usable comes up. The tips you guys are giving me above don't come up as solutions, a question about the very same thing from 2016 comes up but not a solution to the problem.

I should not have to spend 4 hours on a Saturday trying to work out basic stuff like this. It should be intuitive in the design of the app, solutions should be available both under HELP and when you google known problems on top search engines.

This is a classic example of people being so wrapped up in their own product and logic that they've forgotten to take new users into account. Reminds me of Miele, great products but subpar interface design. 

[Mike P 2,642]

@ThoraHave you double clicked the pdf or used open as we have suggested to open the pdf in a different application. eg Adobe reader? If you have then can you confirm that you can select text within that app. If you can't then, as @gazumpedhas suggested thenmaybe your pdf contains scanned images and no actual text.

[Mike P 2,642]

By the way it highlights and copies just fine on my PC 

 

10.46.7-win-ddl-public (3701)
Editor: v158.2.19526
Service: v1.58.7
© 2019 - 2022 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

pdf downloaded from https://we.riseup.net/assets/533560/Zuboff%2C+Shoshana.The+Age+of+Surveillance+Capitalism.2019.pdf

[Boot17 1,450]

Yo @Thora, I think you missed the part I posted above about selecting to view the PDF as 'All Pages'. Your screenshot shows you are viewing it only as 'Single Page'

To display the PDF inline like that you might have to click on the 3 dots from the popup menu and then select to view as 'Single Page' or 'All Pages' like this:

However - I'm not sure that is a very good use-case for Evernote. It could be useful at times, I suppose, but I think an external PDF reader (like many are suggesting) would be way better.

If you are only paying for Evernote for it to just be a PDF reader then I would cancel my subscription if I were you.

Evernote has basic PDF editing and viewing capabilities. I think it's pretty good for occasional use but It was not designed to be a full-fledged PDF reader/editor/tool -- there are way better tools out there for that. It was designed to store your PDFs and make them searchable from within Evernote. Something that I think it does pretty well at. 

[Thora 1]

Thanks Mark, now I can see all the pages that I no longer can highlight.

The highlight function is still freehand and there is no option to select text in the Annotation view. The Note view now lets me see all the pages that I cannot highlight except with the useless freehand option. 

There seems to be no way to select and highlight text in pdf like Evernote used to do. 

[Mike P 2,642]

22 minutes ago, Thora said:

There seems to be no way to select and highlight text in pdf like Evernote used to do. 

and you can select the text if you open the pdf in your default pdf viewer (e.g. Adobe reader)?

[PinkElephant 8,115]

The option to select text depends on the pdf itself, not on EN.

EN makes pdfs searchable, but AFAIK it does not perform a full OCR to embed a text layer into the file. The search index is something different, it just tells at which location on a page a word is found.

If you could select text before, you can still select it in the same document. Then the pdf has come with its own text layer. But if the pdf is picture only (which by looking at it can't be distinguished), there is nothing to extract.

You can use a converter (installed or online, free or paid) to add a text layer to picture only pdfs. This has not been and still is no function EN is providing.