PDF Expert, PDF to Text, Drafts & Workflow<\/p>\n
What a cracking combination!<\/p>\n
Here is the situation. I made a multi page PDF form for data collection about the trips on our shared narrow boat [^1]. This will be passed onto the other owners by email and also pasted into a page on the website. This information needs to be displayed in a simple but effective way, and because not all the owners run specialised PDF software, the best option is plain text. I have automatically embellished the report by the simple matter of adding some markdown formatting symbols ie bold<\/strong> to the PDF form. Date of trip<\/strong>: It does work though with Markdown preview but not in email. It does work as I wish on the website \u2014 so I will keep this.<\/p>\n The problem arises in that is is difficult to extract text from a PDF form, and when you manage this, each page is handled on its own [^2]. The PDF form also needs to be saved as a flattened copy, otherwise nothing appears on the screen. PDF to Text app to the rescue [^3].<\/p>\n My workflow is now to populate the PDF form using PDF Expert[^4] I can now adjust the text, delete words etc using a Workflow that is patched together from examples on the Workflow[^6] website. It takes the text, chews them up and spits them back into Drafts. Then one click on a workflow within the program \u2014 Command C and my text is copied to my Mac. One further click to paste into email or onto the website. Job done.<\/p>\n [^1]:Oasis Too<\/p>\n [^2]:this really relates to iOS \u2014 many desktop PDF programs can extract text, but this is not true in iOS<\/p>\n [^3]:PDF to Text by PDF2Office – the PDF Converter by Recosoft [^4]:PDF Expert 5 – Fill forms, annotate PDFs, sign documents by Readdle [^5]:Drafts 4 – Quickly Capture Notes, Share Anywhere! by Agile Tortoise [^6]:Workflow: Powerful Automation Made Simple by DeskConnect, Inc. [^7]:buy this at once \u2014 it is a no brainer decision<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PDF Expert, PDF to Text, Drafts & Workflow What a cracking combination! Here is the situation. I made a multi page PDF form for data collection about the trips on our shared narrow boat [^1]. This will be passed onto the other owners by email and also pasted into a page on the website. This information needs to be displayed in a simple but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThis works well in our Word Press site and is easy to read in vanilla text in emails.
\nThere are a couple of other formatting issues \u2014 I need to remove a header word, and to colour the “Date of Trip” field in a nice green for the website. This is done by a bit of added html. Unfortunately, this does not help with legibility of the message \u2014<\/p>\n
\n31\/10\/2015 \u2014 07\/11\/2015 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nI used to do this with Good Reader, but each page needed to be extracted, copied and pasted to a document in turn.<\/p>\n
\nThen using ‘open in’ (flattened copy) copy it to PDF to Text. I can convert to txt with this and then use ‘copy to Drafts’.
\nThe text is then displayed in the fantastic Drafts [^5] app[^7]<\/p>\n
\n
\nhttps:\/\/appsto.re\/gb\/K06CU.i<\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/appsto.re\/gb\/nGcwS.i<\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/appsto.re\/gb\/BTL91.i<\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/appsto.re\/gb\/2IzJ2.i<\/p>\n