What to Do When Extracted PDF Text Is Garbled
Key points
- Depending on how fonts are embedded, extraction can fail
- The text data can differ from what's displayed
- Remaking the PDF from the original often solves it
After extraction, the text shows unreadable symbols or wrong characters. The cause lies in how the PDF was made.
Causes
- Font information is embedded in a special way, so text data doesn't match the displayed characters
- The software that made the PDF converted text to shapes (outlines)
- An old format or special Japanese font is used
What to do
- If you have the original file (such as Word), remake the PDF.
- Open it in another PDF viewer (a browser, Preview and so on) and try copying text there.
- If you still can't extract it, turn the PDF into images and use OCR. (This tool has no OCR.)
Checking
See whether only part is garbled or all of it. If only part, fixing it by hand may work.
Use "Extract Text from PDF" (free)Tools that go well with this
- PDF to Images: Save each page of a PDF as a JPEG or PNG image.
- Extract or Delete PDF Pages: Keep only the pages you need, or remove the pages you don't.
- Compress PDF: Shrink a PDF to fit under a size you choose, for upload limits.