Selecting and Copying Graphic Images

You use the Select Image tool, located at the bottom of the Selection toolbar menu on the Basic toolbar, to select individual graphic images for copying. When you choose the Select Image tool, the mouse pointer becomes a crosshair that you use to draw a bounding box around the graphic. After you’ve enclosed the entire graphic (and you don’t have to worry if your marquee is a little larger than the image borders), you can copy the graphic to a new document open in another program either by copying it to the Clipboard (Edit➪ Copy) or by dragging it to a new document window. Note that if your PDF document is tagged, you can simply click an image with the Select Image tool to select a graphic object.
Keep in mind that when you copy images to the Clipboard, Acrobat uses the graphics resolution of your monitor and that set for the Clipboard by your computer’s operating system, rather than the resolution of the images as saved in the PDF document (which could well be a lot higher than either of the two). Also, be aware that all images you copy into the Clipboard are automatically converted onto the Clipboard as pixels, even if they are saved as vector (or line) graphics in the PDF file.

Copying PDF tables into word processors and spreadsheets

The Select Table tool makes it a joy to copy tables from PDF files into wordprocessed documents or spreadsheets.
Microsoft Word automatically recognizes and preserves the table structure by creating a new Word table. Even more importantly, Word has maintained the number formatting as well (indicated by the dollar signs, commas, percent signs, and parentheses for the negative values).
You see that Excel also has no problem recognizing and correctly interpreting the layout and formatting of the table data. It immediately inserted the incoming table data into the correct worksheet cells, while maintaining the correct cell formatting. (By the way, in case you aren’t yet an Excel user, if you see #### symbols in the new worksheet, these symbols merely indicate that the column isn’t wide enough to display the values in that cell — these are not error indicators and are easily disposed of by widening the column.)
Acrobat 6 offers an even easier way to get selected table data into a spreadsheet program. (This method assumes that you already have a CSV-compliant spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel installed on your computer.) Select a table in a PDF document with the Select Table tool, right-click to open the context menu, and choose Open Table in Spreadsheet. Your CSV-compliant spreadsheet program (and all of them are these days) opens a document with your table data imported into the spreadsheet. You can then edit and save your table data in that program’s document format.

Saving a table or formatted text in a new file

Unlike when you select text with the Select Text tool, after you highlight a table or blocks of text with the Select Table tool, you can not only copy it to the Clipboard but also save the selection into a new file format. To do this, you right-click (Control+click on the Mac) the text or table selection and then click Save Selected Table As on the context menu to open the Acrobat Save As dialog box, where you specify the folder, filename, and type of file format in which to save the selection.
Select the Rich Text Format when you want to open the table or formatted text in a word processor such as Microsoft Word. Stay with the Comma Separated Values (*.csv) default file format when you’re saving a table of data and you want to be able to import that data into a spreadsheet program (such as Microsoft Excel) or a database program (such as FileMaker Pro).