what's the fastest way to extract notes from pdf files?

[Mike]

Hi all,

I am not sure if I can post questions about OneNote and generally
note-taking as one part of student life here.

If you know a more focused group/forum/list talking about OneNote and
notetaking softwares, please let me know...

My question is:

Is there a notetaking software that supports the following feature?

When I read e-books (in pdf) on computer, I use markers/highlighters to mark
important portions.

And then once I finish reading the book, by clicking a button I will be able
to have all the marked portions (including text and graphs) all extracted
out from the pdf file and put into a seperate pdf(or other format) file, and
then the newly extracted book becomes a condensed version of the old book
and a review-sheet with all the important points outlined.

Can OneNote do this? Or any other software?

I found it's increasing needed to create a marked-outline of those important
portions of the books that I've read.

Currently I am doing this by hand. It is extremely tedious.

I have to copy the screen, and extract a portion as a bitmap, and then paste
into a WORD file.

But placing bitmaps into WORD file in a nice way isn't easy - it's very
tricky to layout bitmaps after bitmaps.

If there is no software/automatic solutions, any easier /more convinient
solutions for the manual side?

Thanks

 

[Ilya Koulchin]

I am not sure if I can post questions about OneNote and generally
note-taking as one part of student life here.

This group is precisely for posting questions about OneNote, so post
away. You can also post general note-taking questions, although since
this group is focused mainly on OneNote you might get a better response
in a more note-taking focused group.

Is there a notetaking software that supports the following feature?

When I read e-books (in pdf) on computer, I use markers/highlighters to mark
important portions.

And then once I finish reading the book, by clicking a button I will be able
to have all the marked portions (including text and graphs) all extracted
out from the pdf file and put into a seperate pdf(or other format) file, and
then the newly extracted book becomes a condensed version of the old book
and a review-sheet with all the important points outlined.

You could insert the PDF as a printout into OneNote. You can then
type/highlight directly on top of the PDF, or alongside it. You could
also use notetags to mark important notes or pages. I don't think
there's going to be an easy way to extract just portions of the original
PDF, but you could use notetag summaries to find all the notes you
previously tagged.
By printing into OneNote you also get other benefits, such as having the
images be searchable (after text recognition runs), easy sharing with
others if needed, easy filing along with all your other notes, etc.

Ilya

 

[Mike]

This group is precisely for posting questions about OneNote, so post away.
You can also post general note-taking questions, although since this group
is focused mainly on OneNote you might get a better response in a more
note-taking focused group.


You could insert the PDF as a printout into OneNote. You can then
type/highlight directly on top of the PDF, or alongside it. You could also
use notetags to mark important notes or pages. I don't think there's going
to be an easy way to extract just portions of the original PDF, but you
could use notetag summaries to find all the notes you previously tagged.
By printing into OneNote you also get other benefits, such as having the
images be searchable (after text recognition runs), easy sharing with
others if needed, easy filing along with all your other notes, etc.

Ilya

Thanks Ilya,

the key thing I am looking for is to extract the important points into a
condensed version.

Any thoughts?

 

[Bill]

Here is a start:

I did a test doc in Word. 3 paragraphs, middle one highlighted. Did a
replace, replacing highlighted text with nothing. My non-highlighted
paragraphs went away.

In Word: File, click Replace, More, Format, Highlight, Format, Highlight,
Replace All.

You end up looking for Not Highlighted text and replacing it with nothing.
You are left with the Highlighted text. You can the Select All and do a Copy
and Paste to wherever.

Do not know how this would work in PDF. May have to copy all to Word and
then Replace. My test was in Word 2003.

Bill

 

[Mike]

Of course my source has to be the ebooks in PDF format...

 

[willcarter]

My question is:
An obvious observation is that creating bitmaps seems a very
inefficient way of copying, Why not just use the Select tool to
highlight the paragrpah and copy/paste the text directly into Word? I
thought even the basic versions of Acrobat Reader had a Select tool
(toggles with the 'hand' tool) but I may beb wrong. If your version of
Acrobat doesn't allow you to select then you need to get one that
does. Perhaps there's a cheap student edition?

It's 10 times more efficient than making screenshots and non-editable
image files.

Whether you can automomatically dump all highlighted sections into
another document I don't know.

Aside -- whatever happened to the days when we used to have to spend
hours in the university library, reading real books, and making
copious handwritten notes in giant notebooks?

will

 

[azer.sumnotes]

Hello!
If you need to extract highlights, notes, and images from your PDFs, sumnotes can be the best solution.
It supports all the most diffused operating systems and devices. You can also export the results into your email, word/doc, evernote, and clipboard.
You can try it out on www.sumnotes.net
It really saves a lot of time and efforts!
I hope you will like it!
Cheers!