The Portable Document Format (PDF) is used for documents you want to send electronically. It's a popular format because it can be viewed by anyone who owns a free PDF reader, such as Adobe Reader, on their computer. The PDF also retains all formatting you may have done in another program and cannot be easily edited by other users. PDFs are created using Adobe Acrobat. Use Acrobat's Select tool to cut and paste text or images into other files. However, the creator of the PDF is able to put restrictions on copying text, in which case the "Cut, Copy and Paste" commands won't be available to you. Cutting and pasting PDFs are not possible in Adobe Reader, so you need the full version of Acrobat.
Cut and Paste Text
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Step 1
Open a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat.
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Step 2
Choose the "Select" tool from the Select & Zoom toolbar.
Step 3
Select text that you want to cut and paste by clicking and dragging your cursor over it. To select a column of text, move your pointer towards a column. The pointer will turn into the Column Select tool. Drag a box over the column.
Step 4
Click "Cut" under the "Edit" menu.
Step 5
Open a file in another application. Click "Edit, Paste" to paste the text.
Copy and Paste Images
Step 1
Choose the "Select" tool.
Step 2
Click and drag a box around an entire image to select it. If you want, select only part of an image by scrolling over the image until you see the cross-hair pointer. Drag a box over the portion of the image you want to select.
Step 3
Copy the image by selecting "Edit, Copy."
Step 4
Open a file in another application. Click "Edit, Paste" to paste the image.