Selected text can be copied and pasted into other applications. Text attributes (formatting, font, columns) are copied along with the text and match the original formatting as much as possible. Text is automatically selected in columns if your document is formatted that way.

1. Make sure the Select Text tool

   

   is active.
2. Click and drag your mouse over the text you want to select.

Note: A PDF document that is a scan of a printed page is a bitmap image of text and will not have selectable text. It is treated as an image of text and not actual text.

When you try to select text in such a document it will ask to perform Optical Character Recognition first. For details on generating selectable text from a scan, see OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Tips on Selecting Text

• Double-click to select a word; triple-click to select a whole line.
• Select text across more than one page by changing pages and shift-clicking into the new page to extend the selection.
• Select all the text in a document by choosing Edit > Select All (Command+A).

Select a text block to move or delete using the Precision Edit tool. This is different from a text box where you can edit the text it contains.

1. Select the Precision Edit tool

   

   from the Editing bar.
2. Click on the word or line you would like to move or remove. Then drag it around, resize it, or delete it.

PDFpen lets you edit or delete original text in your PDF document.

1. Select the text you want to correct using the Select Text tool

   

   .
2. Click the Correct Text button

   

   in the toolbar.
3. The selected text is replaced with a text box that can be edited or deleted, just like any other text box.

Tips on Correcting Text

• Correct Text works best on small portions of text in the same line or paragraph.
• The results may not match the underlying text exactly. In particular, fonts and spacing will vary at times. PDFpen will match the font in the document with a font in your macOS provided Font Book. If you do not have the same font, it chooses the closest match.

Formatting Text

See Formatting Text.