M Skabialka said:
The page was a list in a table format. I am unable to select and copy, so
was hoping to output to some other format where I could capture the info.
Please explain what you mean by "unable to select and copy". Is there some
kind of Javascript security on the page that disables the select and copy
options? Is "Select All" grayed out on the right-click menu? How about
"Edit" and "Select All" on your browser menu bar? How about hold Ctrl key
and press A to select all, and ctrl+C to copy? Are you viewing an ordinary
html page or a PDF document with Adobe Acrobat Reader WITHIN Internet
Explorer, that is copyright protected with ability to copy disabled?
(Is what you asking us to help you do, uh, LEGAL?
In the Select Printer dialog on my XP-pro SP3, I have a "Microsoft XPS
Document Writer" option, that came pre-installed on the computer. Was that
included with your setup? (See FREE Microsoft download link below.) Instead
of a Print to file, I tried a Print of a web page that has a table part, way
down the page, using the XPS writer (printer driver) selected as the
printer, and a FileSave dialog appeared for a filename, which saved with an
..xps extension. I double-clicked that file and it opened with XPSViewer,
WITHIN Internet Explorer. It was in paged format, with the information
appearing pretty much as the web page, except the table was split, with the
first part of the table at the bottom of the first page, and the rest at the
top of the second page. (Same as if printed on paper.) Back to the web page,
I used my mouse to select some text immediately before the table on the
page, then scrolled down to where I could see the bottom of the table, and
while holding SHIFT key, clicked below the table, to EXTEND the selection.
Then ctrl-P to activate the print dialog, with XPS as printer, and also, in
the "Page Range" box, clicked "Selection" and then print. The FileSave
dialog appeared, and I saved it under a different filename than the first. I
double clicked it, and the whole table appeared on one sheet in the
XPSViewer (within IE), with that little bit of text before and after the
table that I included in the selection. All the text is readable and can be
selected for copying.
I tried selecting the table from the web page, and copy, and opened
Microsoft WordPad, and pasted, and some of the html table formatting was
lost in WordPad's RTF version, but all the information was readable,
selectable, and also editable.
I opened a PDF document (about Unicode) with 3 pages, with a complete table
on page 2, and printed to XPS writer, FileSaveAs, etc. and double-clicked,
and it opened in XPSViewer within IE, and looks pretty much the same as in
Acrobat Reader. The table included hebrew characters which displayed
properly in the XPSViewer too. Everything readable and selectable. Another
PDF with a graphic diagram on one page appeared the same in XPSViewer.
The final test was with a PDF document with Document Security: "Printing:
Fully Allowed", but "Content Copying or Extraction: Not Allowed". Printed
one page to XPS, displayed the same in XPSViewer(in IE), and it was
readable, selectable and printable. However, when SelectAll and Copy, and
Paste into other text readers, such as NotePad, WordPad, and Word2007, it
appeared as unreadable Gobbledygook, as expected. (To prevent extraction,
except printing, the character set in the PDF has been scrambled for use
with special fonts that have the characters associated with different
character code numbers. The XPS file format might further complicate things
by switching to Unicode.) The XPS file itself is basically a ZIP compressed
packet with a number of different files, including .xml files and .odttf
fonts. There were a total of 17 files in the copy protected PDF page I
printed to XPS. See other replies for other printer driver options to
"capture" stuff.
XPS Viewer factoid:
The XPS Viewer is included with .NET Framework 3.0 and Windows Vista.
If you don’t have .NET Framework 3.0, you can download the XPS Essentials
Pack, which is a standalone version of the XPS Viewer, by going to the View
and Generate XPS page on the Microsoft website. This version of the viewer
is compatible with Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. You
can view, copy, or print XPS documents in the XPS Essentials Pack, but you
cannot digitally sign or set permissions for a document.
View and Generate XPS
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx
To reveal hidden information on that page, click where you see: "To see the
complete feature list of Microsoft XPS Viewer click here."
FWIW. --Richard
