Best way to scrape text from a PDF or User Interface (UI)?

[ccstone]

@johnk

Thank you all so much. I’m hoping to find a technique that is fully contained within KM. I just want it to be easily portable from machine to machine. We share our macros across a number of machines and people, and it will be nice if the features we use are just fully within KM’s wheelhouse.

In my opinion you're much better off taking the trouble to learn how to use xpdf tools.

macOS does provide the means to extract text from PDFs, but it's not pretty. Try this macro on the selected PDF file in the Finder.

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Download: Extract Text From PDF File Selected in the Finder v1.00.kmmacros (7.8 KB)

Macro-Image

Macro-Notes

• Macros are always disabled when imported into the Keyboard Maestro Editor.
  • The user must ensure the macro is enabled.
  • The user must also ensure the macro's parent macro-group is enabled.

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System Information

• macOS 10.14.6
• Keyboard Maestro v10.2

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It may or may not be good enough for your needs.