Use Preview for selective copy in PDFs

Ever seen a spiffy diagram or chart in a PDF document and wanted to include the graphic in your own report or document? You can use the Preview application to selectively copy whatever you wish in PDFs and then paste directly into another document. Here’s how.

Warning! Be sure you have permission to copy and reuse the material you wish to copy to conform to your local copyright law.

Open the PDF in the Preview application and choose Tools → Select Tool or simply click the Select Tool button on the toolbar, as shown in the attached screenshot.

When the Select Tool is active – the I Beam cursor will change to a Crosshair cursor. To select an area, press and hold the mouse button while dragging the mouse to highlight the area.

After selection, choose Edit → Copy or press Command+C to copy. Now you can paste into your own document or into a graphics application if you need to further refine the copied selection.