From time to time I receive downloaded or emailed PDF files that are difficult to deal with. This may be due to inherent features within the PDF files, or it could be due to features in macOS. Can anyone suggest ways to handle these files using standard macOS tools?
First example: An insurance company invoice in which the account number is recognized as a date by the Preview app (and other apps such as Notes). Clicking on the dropdown arrow (or trying right-click) attempts to create a new calendar event.
Second example: The policy number (redacted) is apparently recognized as a telephone number and treated as such by the drop-down feature. Preview/macOS tries to create a new contact. And why would macOS want to name the contact “Jabber”?
I simply want to copy the text of these numbers and paste them into other records and documents that I create and retain permanently. MacOS is trying to “help”, I suppose, but in reality is causing confusion and making more work for me. I wouldn’t even try to teach my wife to handle these PDF files and extract information such as policy numbers or account numbers.
Is there a way to disable these “helpful” features in macOS?
Trying to modify the PDF files by “printing” or “save as PDF” within the macOS Print command does not work - the resultant PDF file is the same. Certain numbers are recognized as dates, others as telephone numbers. I think that JPG files are similar when opened by Preview. Text is recognized, but extracting numbers is hindered as described above.
You could try using TextSniper or CleanShotX. They have a feature where you draw a square on screen and it grabs the text inside it, based on character recognition not selecting text. This is great for getting the text of fiddly stuff like links or grabbing text from PDFs.
Thanks, that’s helpful. I just looked up “jabber” - apparently this is an old and deprecated app/service recently declared end-of-life/end-of-support by Cisco.
So that begs the question, Why is macOS still foisting this useless “help” on us? Too cute by half, in my view.
I’m willing to install 3rd party apps when needed but prefer native macOS functions when possible. I have 3 Macs in the household to maintain, keep up with updates, etc.
I actually used Cleanshot X a while back since it is included in my Setup subscription. Although it was good, I eventually discarded it because it conflicted with the native macOS screenshot functionality (which is really quite good now). When using Cleanshot X for a few months I had to remember which of my Macs used Cleanshot and which ones didn’t. Plus the default Desktop folder, different on different Macs, had a mix of default screenshot files and Cleanshot files. Probably simple to resolve this, but too much detail to remember.
I notice that TextSniper is also in Setapp, maybe I’ll give it a try. Hopefully it won’t have keyboard shortcuts that conflict with native macOS shortcuts - or 1Password, or who knows what. I’m also aware that macOS (and IOS) now includes quite a bit of native text-recognition capability. Maybe too much … which is the entire point of my post
For what it’s worth, I have found that if I click to the left of the string and select going to the right, I am able to select just the text and copy it. If I click on the text or to the right of the text, then I get the same behavior as you.
Yes, my experience is the behavior is slightly different when starting the text selection from the left vs. from the right. Done carefully, this avoids the sudden popup of the little drop-down arrow and the “helpful” suggested slate of actions.
But it neither case is the selection “clean”. Even when carefully avoiding the drop-down arrow (and its pre-selected actions) copying your selection still results in a more-than-just-text selection.
Example: Select the text, starting from the left and carefully avoiding the dropdown arrow, then paste that selection to somewhere - perhaps a new Note, a Pages document, or whatever. That pasted content will still be handled by macOS (or Pages, or Notes) as something other than just text. It might be recognized as a phone number, a date, or perhaps a Fedex or UPS tracking number - and handled accordingly when you try to select that “text” from the new document.
This happens even when you paste the selection as “paste and match style” into the new document.
The behavior I experience seems to be an inherent feature ubiquitous in macOS and its apps. I would like a setting to disable that macOS feature to “recognize” certain text as “special” - a phone number, a date, or a tracking number. Or maybe a choice from the right-click menu to do a “clean copy” of the text, sans special features.
There are times when it is helpful to recognize a selection as “special”. The spreadsheet app Numbers is quite good at recognizing certain text as dates, numbers, etc. But sometimes a series of 10 numbers is not a phone number - it’s just a number. Or a certain string of numbers is not a date - it’s just a number. Or a simple text string.
Here’s an old-ish discussion thread on the issue. I assume the “escape” trick still works but haven’t tested it.
What I have observed is these data detectors result when a Word document is saved or printed to PDF by a recent release of MS Word (e.g. 16.69.1). Ordinarily, an application capable of disabling data detectors would have an Edit menu > Substitutions > Data Detectors menu entry, but because Preview is not a PDF Editor, it doesn’t have that Substitutions menu item.
The easiest, perhaps only means to highlight a data detector field as you have shown is by two-finger tap/control-click the number which selects it, and then press ESC to dismiss the secondary menu. Then you are free to highlight or remove the highlight feature from this detector field.
