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Welcome and today, we're going to look at how to convert a PDF into text using Google
Docs. Now, before we get into that, one word of warning about this particular process.
This will only work if you have a PDF file that is UNDER 2 megabytes. If your PDF file
is over 2 megabytes, this will not work for you. So please keep that in mind. If you have
the capabilities of saving a large PDF as several small ones, maybe you can do that
or you might want to try one of the other methods of doing this. So in order to do this,
you'll want to go to your North Shore Community College Gmail account. And when you are here,
you simply go up to Documents and select that. That will bring you into your Documents and
the resources that you have there in. Now, one thing that you'll want to do is to find
the folder that has the PDF that you want to convert into text. When you find that,
you click PDF and drag and drop it into your Google Documents. Now when this happens, it's
going to provide you with a specific promp that you'll want to pay attention to. In this
prompt, there are several boxes. The one that we're most concerned with is "Convert text
from PDF and image files to Google documents". You'll want to make sure for this process
that this button is selected. Then you select "Start Upload." Over on the right here, you'll
see this little Upload Menu and the process depending on the file, should be pretty quick.
Once it's uploaded, it will show up in your file listing, right here. As we can see, it
is right here for us to take a look at. You click on it and it will again open the file
in Google Docs. So here we have the title and we've now entered into the Google Docs
program. One of the first things you'll notice that's important to take note of is the first
thing that Google does is to take your PDF and turn it into an image. It's almost as
if it took a picture of your PDF. It then embeds that image into the document. Now,
it does this in part so that you know what you PDF looked like, so that when you get
to the text, the actual text that Google Docs inserts, you can compare. You can say, "Ok,
here I have 'Converting PDFS for Word Files' is that exactly how it looks up here. It's
there in order to instill accuracy as well for Google to make it has properly added the
text accurately. And we can see Google has taken the material and done fairly well with
keeping the format and layout and everything that within that document. So after you have
converted it into a Google Doc and you have made sure that everything has followed through
safely, you want to then make sure to do is to decide if you want download it or if you
want it in a file format other than Google. You go right up to the File Menu. You go to
Download.
If we look at Download, we have several different options here. We have "ODT" which is the file
format for OpenOffice. PDF which is the file format you just converted from. "RTF" which
is Rich Text Format. It's a universal word processing format that can be used on any
word processing program. Text which is a basic text file. Word as in Microsoft Word and you
can save it there and have it to use it within Word. And HTML, which if you wanted it on
a site or just as a way of containing the information, you certainly could. So there
you have how to convert a PDF into a Word document or other text file using GoogleDocs.
Thank you very much.