Copying and pasting from Paperpile to text editor

Support
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#1

Hi

When I copy a section of text from an article I’m reading in Paperpile into a Word document or other text editor, the formatting is sometimes off. Like this:

Whiletheterm‘engagement’isincreasinglyusedinclinicalpracticeandresearch,therehasbeenrelativelylittlecriticalexplorationofwhat‘engagement’meansandtheunderpinningconcept/sthetermmayrepresent.Researchofengagementappearstobeinitsearlydays,withlittleconsensusonwhatengagementis,whatleadstoapatientbeingperceivedasengagedordisengagedorindeed,howengagementoccurs.Thetermengagementisusedinmultiplewaysintheliterature,variablyreferringtopatientactionsandbehaviorssuchasaccessingservices[6],retentionwithinservices[7,8],enthusiasm[2]andself‐managementofhealthconditions[8],

However, when I download the same article and copy the same text from within Preview or PDF Expert, I don’t have an issue:

While the term ‘engagement’ is increasingly used in clinical practice and research, there has been relatively little critical exploration of what ‘engagement’ means and the underpinning concept/s the term may represent. Research of engagement appears to be in its early days, with little consensus on what engagement is, what leads to a patient being perceived as engaged or disengaged or indeed, how engagement occurs. The term engagement is used in multiple ways in the literature, variably referring to patient actions and behaviors such as accessing services [6], retention within services [7, 8], enthusiasm [2] and self‐management of health conditions [8],

Why is this?

Thanks

2 Likes
#2

Thanks for the report, @M_Biel. We recently received another report of the same which we were able to reproduce sparingly, so the issue is now on the team’s queue of issues to address on the PDF beta. I don’t have a timeline to share for a solution, but it will likely be addressed during one of the next updates of the beta.

#3

Thank you

#4

Any progress on this? I’m having to download all my pdfs if I want to copy any text out of them.

#5

Thanks for the follow-up, @M_Biel. No updates to share unfortunately; we’ve reproduced on specific PDFs but have not been able to prioritize a solution so far. Those PDFs appear to be OCR’d (run through character recognition software rather than computer-typed) which is a likely cause of the issue.

Do you know if your files are also OCR’d, or at least old/older? Does it happen with every single PDF you’ve tried, without exception? Please feel free to share examples with us via chat or email (support@paperpile.com).

#6

Here are some example papers where I have had issues copying text:

Is it on every paper? I can’t say for sure because: 1) I’ve abandonded trying to do it for some time and have just downloaded the paper if I think I’m going to copy text; 2) it was on every paper out of 5 that I randomly tested today (when I donwloaded and opened them in PDF Expert I did not experience the same issues copying and pasting text; 3) it does not appear to just be me because my students notice the same thing.