Copying from a PDF to Word - or Editing a PDF

I've been purchasing leadsheets, but sometimes have to buy sheet music with piano accompaniment. It occurred to me that, rather than cutting the music apart and taping the solo parts back together, I may be able to copy and paste from a PDF to Word. I actually did that successfully with one piece of music that had no chord notations and no lyrics. After my initial excitement, I found I am unable to copy from other music that does have chords and lyrics.

I have Adobe Acrobat Pro. Does anyone know how I can copy and paste successfully to Word - or edit the PDF to delete the piano part? I Googled my question and a couple of PDF editors came up. If someone can vouch for one of those, I'll give it a try.

I think you need a PDF editor. Acrobat is able to make PDFs but not necessarily edit another file.

Photoshop allows importing PDFs and then you can edit as an image (at least my old version 6 does). You can then save as a PDF or JPEG.

It can be tedious, but you can:

1. Take a screenshot
2. Paste into Word
3. Use Picture Tools... Crop to isolate a solo part
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as necessary

Are you working from hard copy (paper) or a PDF file

OLD SCHOOL
1) Print out the PDF or make a paper copy of your hard copy sheet music.
2) Cut the (copied) sheet music into strips (horizontal) and throw away the piano stuff
3) Tack the melody/lead lines onto a piece of white card stock with a glue stick. (You may want to print some regularly spaced gray horizontal lines on the chard stick to use as guide and spacing lines - it'll keep your pasteups "level". Card stock will keep your pasteup from buckling because of it's thickness. Don't paste up on 20lb bond if you can avoid it.
4) Put your pasteup on your printer/copier and print out a copy, or scan the page into your computer (at 8.5 x 11 it will probably save it as a PDF).

DIGITALLY: (more trouble to do, imo)
1) Cut your on screen pdf into pieces with individual screen shots
2) assemble those screen shots into your pianoless lead sheet with a photo editing program.
3) save completed page and print out.

I did mechanical paste-up for years and years. Mandocrucian's Digest was all "analog" ... IBM selectric typewriter copy (reduced in point size on a copier) pasted onto the tabloid layout grid pages (provided by the printing co.) Now, everything can be done on a computer. Doing multi-color separations for T-shirt silk screening - what might take a day or two to do with multiple mylar overlays can be done on a computer in several hours.

If you find a fast way of doing your sheet music digitally, I wouldn't mind hearing your process.

Niles H

If you have adobe acrobat Pro you should be able to edit it, unless it's an image, then you can copy paste the whole image only, there were some OCR around but not sure how they'll handle sheet music.

With acrobat Pro you should also be able to export to various formats, the latest version of adobe acrobat pro DC, I don't have it at hand but i have it at the office, do you have an example sheet to try out ? i might try it out for you...

cheers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brogh

If you have adobe acrobat Pro you should be able to edit it, unless it's an image...

---

Sheet music is likely to be an image. When I work up a chart and "print to pdf" it encodes as a jpeg or one other compressed image.

An image editor might be the best approach. I've cleaned up pdf versions of tunes using Photoshop.

iSkysoft PDF Editor Pro can delete staves and move staves around (I just tried it).

I own it but don't use it very often – how 'bout you send me what you want edited (PM me for my email address), tell me what you want accomplished, and I'll see if it's possible (and send you the results) before you go buying the app.

Seems I can delete anything – notes, chord symbols, clefs, and still leave the staff intact if I wanted to. :)

I doctor PDF's on Mac with PDF Expert.

So, for the public record:

My initial experimentation was on pdf's that had been exported directly from Sibelius, and I could make all sorts of edits – Sherry's are pdf's of scanned music, and (using iSkysoft, at least) I couldn't do much of anything.

I live in the Mac world and thus don't have to fuss with Acrobat, but if you have the pro version I would imagine there's a "select" tool where you can draw a selection rectangle around the portion of the PDF you want, copy it, and then paste it into a Word doc. Repeat, arrange, resize, etc and then save your Word doc. I do this all the time for church music I get in PDF form.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rob Roy

I live in the Mac world and thus don't have to fuss with Acrobat, but if you have the pro version I would imagine there's a "select" tool where you can draw a selection rectangle around the portion of the PDF you want, copy it, and then paste it into a Word doc. Repeat, arrange, resize, etc and then save your Word doc. I do this all the time for church music I get in PDF form.

---

Thanks, Rob. I tried the "select tool" thing and once again got gobbledy gook.

I believe MuseScore can import PDF for editing.

Steven

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Richard James

It can be tedious, but you can:

1. Take a screenshot
2. Paste into Word
3. Use Picture Tools... Crop to isolate a solo part
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as necessary

---

I have done this many times with church music, but I find it works better in PowerPoint. I change the page size to 8.5x11" portrait. I do as many pastes as I have solo lines in the page. I crop each line vertically down to size and then stack them. Then I select them all and group them into one image. Then I use the "Save as Picture" function to create one image of the whole solo line. If there are two pages, I can often get two pages on to one. I've done it enough that I can make it look pretty good and get it done fairly quickly. I just find PowerPoint has better image editing than Word.

Simple the way I do it, since I work a lot with graphics. I take the pdf to https://pdf2png.com/ and convert it to a .png file and then edit to my heart's content in a graphics editing program. If I want, I can then convert it back to a .pdf file afterward (I use Foxit Reader).

bratsche

This is my balliwick! Since you have Acrobat Pro, take a look at the Export To function under the File menu. Acrobat does a great job of exporting to PowerPoint and a decent job exporting to Word.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Michael H Geimer

This is my balliwick! Since you have Acrobat Pro, take a look at the Export To function under the File menu. Acrobat does a great job of exporting to PowerPoint and a decent job exporting to Word.

---

Michael, thanks for this. I've sent you a message.

Sherry

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Michael H Geimer

This is my balliwick! Since you have Acrobat Pro, take a look at the Export To function under the File menu. Acrobat does a great job of exporting to PowerPoint and a decent job exporting to Word.

---

I used that feature creating manuals when teaching. Export to jpeg and cut and paste edit in Paint - export into powerpoint and create new pdf. Editing pdf's directly thru pro is clunky and limited to basic text editing

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mark Wilson

I used that feature creating manuals when teaching. Export to jpeg and cut and paste edit in Paint - export into powerpoint and create new pdf. Editing pdf's directly thru pro is clunky and limited to basic text editing

---

Turns out I have Adobe Acrobat Pro X. There's no "Export to" under File. I can save as a jpeg. Is that the same thing?

Sherry, I replied to your PM so go ahead and send over the PDF to me via email. I'll convert and we can all see what happens.

Edit: So, Jim above has discovered the core issue. PDF - as a document format - is just a 'wrapper' that can hold most any kind of content. In this case the original score was scanned to create a picture that is 'wrapped' into a PDF. Removing the wrapper changes nothing about the content inside.

That said, all the image editing solutions discussed above become the only way forward.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Michael H Geimer

Sherry, I replied to your PM so go ahead and send over the PDF to me via email. I'll convert and we can all see what happens.

---

Michael, I sent you an email this morning.

Sherry

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sherry Cadenhead

Turns out I have Adobe Acrobat Pro X. There's no "Export to" under File. I can save as a jpeg. Is that the same thing?

---

Yes. Then take that to an image editor like Paint.