Scraping PDF

[thegurio1 2]

Not Mac per se, but across all platforms - is there a way to get data into a note from a PDF instead of being a PDF in a note (if that makes any sense...)

What happens is 90% of my Evernote stuff is PDF's and they are all attached to the note like in an email. What I would like is the data in the PDF to be on the note. Is there a way that's possible? I don't mind using IFTT if I need to...

[SebR 146]

You want to textify the pdf ?

[thegurio1 2]

If that's an option that'd be great, I wasn't sure on hi to put it lol

[SebR 146]

There're software for textify pdf but I nerver used'em (and I'm not a mac user). 

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

On the mac you can use Automator to extract plain text from PDFs. Forum user GrumpyMonkey has a post about that here:

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=551

 

Keeping in mind that you lose formatting and images in the process. 

 

Otherwise you might consider ponying up the relatively high price for Adobe Acrobat 11. That offers some considerable conversion options, though aside from the Automator script mentioned above, all of your options will likely require some amount of manual intervention. 

[gazumped 11,652]

If your main concern is to be able to read the contents of the PDF,  have you checked your settings to see whether you have "show PDF documents as attachments" ticked?  You should be able to read PDFs inline on a desktop at least,  though that doesn't affect mobile devices which (I believe) always show PDFs as attachments.

[thegurio1 2]

Gazumped, I mainly use EN on my ipad, so while that's great sitting at my desk I don't spend much time there...

I might give it a crack and see if I can find something. It's just annoying really to have to make it a few step process to get to the end result.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Unfortunately there is no easy way to display a PDF in line on an iOS device, it needs to be opened in a dedicated viewer. As such any PDF in an Evernote note will only ever show up as an attachment on an iOS device that you must tap to view. 

There are some applications that have built the ability to preview a PDF without actually opening it, but my understanding is that such a thing is challenging to do well (and few have done it at all!).