Automator will ask you to select a type for your document. On your Mac, open Automator from Applications. And provided the text in the PDF is formatted correctly (and you're not trying to extract text that is actually an image), it's foolproof as well as free! Thankfully, a friend ( who discovered how to from MacWorld) showed me, using Automator. Too often I've spent a frustrating amount of time putting text back into a coherent order after copying it from a PDF, while wondering why there isn't a simpler way of doing this on my Mac.

Have you every tried to copy and paste text from a PDF into a word processor document like Pages or Microsoft Word? Most of the time the text loses all its formatting from the PDF, which can be a real pain. More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice (and expert) Mac users.