That depends on what kind of PDF it is - if a PDF was computer generated, then yes, sometimes you can select the text. If, however, the PDF was made from a scanned piece of paper, then unless it was scanned with OCR software, there won't be any text to select as the entire thing is an image.
Thanks for the clarification that sometimes it does work, though.
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This is likely a tough one - many PDFs are actually images of a page - not any kind of text file. The first step is to use an OCR program like Omnipage (unfortunately quite expensive) to convert the file to text format. Then copy and paste the text into Opensong and edit.
I'm sorry to say that it is most likely more work than it is worth to try to convert - you will probably have to re-enter a lot of things manually.
One suggestion though - when I make a new chart I search the web for the lyrics of the song. If the song is at least somewhat popular, the lyrics are usually fairly easy to find. This saves a lot of typing as the lyrics can be copied from the web page into OpenSong. You then only have to type the chords over the words.
This may sound disappointing, but to tell you the truth, even if you were able to convert the PDF to text, there is still some OpenSong formatting that you will want to do to clean up how it prints and displays on the projector, so even a PDF import would be far from automatic.
One other suggestion - I don't know how many charts you want to import, but I have found that often times we stop doing the older songs after a while, and if I enter just the songs I'm doing for the next set, pretty soon I have most of them done that I will likely use again.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Actually, In Adobe reader you CAN copy the text.
just click on the "select" tab (to the right of the search button).
This will give you a cursor allowing you to select text. Then just right click on copy.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
What's the easiest way to import a PDF song into OpenSong? Is there a way to change it to OpenSong format, then drag it into the folder?
That depends on what kind of PDF it is - if a PDF was computer generated, then yes, sometimes you can select the text. If, however, the PDF was made from a scanned piece of paper, then unless it was scanned with OCR software, there won't be any text to select as the entire thing is an image.
Thanks for the clarification that sometimes it does work, though.
This is likely a tough one - many PDFs are actually images of a page - not any kind of text file. The first step is to use an OCR program like Omnipage (unfortunately quite expensive) to convert the file to text format. Then copy and paste the text into Opensong and edit.
I'm sorry to say that it is most likely more work than it is worth to try to convert - you will probably have to re-enter a lot of things manually.
One suggestion though - when I make a new chart I search the web for the lyrics of the song. If the song is at least somewhat popular, the lyrics are usually fairly easy to find. This saves a lot of typing as the lyrics can be copied from the web page into OpenSong. You then only have to type the chords over the words.
This may sound disappointing, but to tell you the truth, even if you were able to convert the PDF to text, there is still some OpenSong formatting that you will want to do to clean up how it prints and displays on the projector, so even a PDF import would be far from automatic.
One other suggestion - I don't know how many charts you want to import, but I have found that often times we stop doing the older songs after a while, and if I enter just the songs I'm doing for the next set, pretty soon I have most of them done that I will likely use again.
Actually, In Adobe reader you CAN copy the text.
just click on the "select" tab (to the right of the search button).
This will give you a cursor allowing you to select text. Then just right click on copy.