I found a very important PDF file during my research, but it is password protected. How can I retrieve data from such a backed up file? No problem. Here I explain how you can copy from a protected PDF document using four efficient solutions. I would particularly like to recommend PDFelement. It’s easy-to-use, powerful, and allows you to effectively copy text from protected PDFs. It also supports reading, editing, annotating, creating, converting and signing PDF documents.

Copy text from protected PDFs with PDF Password Remover

If your PDF documents are protected by an access password to prevent editing, modifying, copying or printing, you cannot copy any text from the protected PDF file. In this case, PDF Password Remover is the best tool to bypass such password restrictions and copy text from locked PDF documents.

Step 1. Load the protected PDF file

Start the program on your computer. Now import your desired file by clicking the “Add Files” button on the top left corner. A dialog window will now open. In the dialog box, select the file to decrypt.

Step 2. Remove the password

After importing the PDF file into the program, you can click the “Start” button. Your encrypted file will now be decrypted and the copy restriction will be removed. Now use a PDF viewer to open the new PDF document and copy text from it.

Copy text from protected PDFs with PDFelement

If you know the access passwords of your PDF document, you can use PDFelement to remove the password permanently. You can use PDFelement or any other PDF viewer to copy text directly from the PDF file.

Step 1. Enable Permission

After opening the protected PDF document in the program, please click the “Enable Editing” button to enter the access password.

Step 2. Remove Password

Go to Protect > “Password” and disable permission to permanently unlock PDF.

Step 3. Copy text from protected PDF file

Now select the “Select” tool in the top menu bar. Select your desired text from the PDF file and right-click to select “Copy Text”.

PDFelement also supports creating PDF files from blank documents, images, HTML files, existing PDFs, screenshots and screen window recordings. You can also convert PDF files to images, HTML, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, EPUB, plain text, rich text, etc. Here you will learn the steps to edit PDF text easily.

Video on copying text from protected PDF files

Copy text from protected PDFs with Google Chrome

Perhaps the access password of your PDF document only prevents copying, while allowing editing. In this case, you can print your protected PDF file as a normal PDF file using the Chrome browser and copy text from it.

Step 1. Open the protected PDF file

Download, install and launch the Google Chrome browser on your computer. Drag the protected PDF file from your local drive into the Chrome browser. Now it will open directly in a tab.

Step 2. Print the protected PDF file

Select the “Print” option in the top right corner of this Chrome browser.

Step 3. Save as regular PDF

Click the “Save” button to save the document as a PDF. Now you can open the saved PDF document with a PDF viewer, select the text inside and press “Ctrl + C” to copy the text.

Copy text from protected PDFs via screen capture

With PDFelement, you can not only take a snapshot of the content of a protected PDF file, but also directly convert the snapshot into editable text content using the built-in OCR function.

Step 1. Take a snapshot of the protected PDF

After opening the protected PDF document in PDFelement, please open the “View” tab and select “Snapshot”. Now click the mouse to draw the area to capture. Select the “Save” option to save the recording to your local drive.

Step 2. Create a new PDF file

Drag the saved snapshot into the PDFelement window to create a PDF document from it. An image-based PDF document is now created, but the text in it cannot be edited at first.

Step 3. Create an editable PDF file using OCR

Use the “OCR” tool in the “Edit” menu. Select the “Editable Text” mode and select correct language for the text to perform OCR. After running OCR, the new editable PDF file will be opened automatically. Now you can select the text to be copied. This is the third way to copy text from protected PDF files.