Why moving Urdu from a PDF into InPage is so awkward
InPage is still the standard for Urdu page making. Newspapers, magazines, book publishers and the composing shops around every court and bazaar use it every day. But the material composers receive is more and more often a PDF: a statement from a press office, an article sent from a phone, a notification from a government website, a chapter typed by an author in Word.
Getting that text into InPage has two separate problems.
- The PDF itself. A PDF does not store Urdu as text in reading order. Many PDFs store the letter shapes from left to right, use “presentation forms” instead of real letters, or put English words and numbers in the wrong place. Copying from a PDF viewer gives you that broken text, which we explain in detail in why Urdu text copied from PDFs looks broken.
- InPage’s encoding. InPage 2000 and 2.x were built before Unicode Urdu was common, and they use their own private character codes. Even perfectly good Unicode Urdu pastes into them as boxes or question marks. The background is in our guide to InPage and Unicode.
Most people solve this by retyping the whole text, which is slow and introduces mistakes. This tool solves both problems in one place. It reads the PDF with pdf.js, rebuilds each line in right-to-left reading order, and repairs presentation forms, Arabic look-alike letters and reversed lines. Then it converts the clean Unicode text into InPage’s own codes, using the same tested character table as our Unicode to InPage converter.
What works and what does not
| PDF made with | Can the text be moved into InPage? |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice | Yes, normally with no errors |
| A browser’s “Save as PDF” (Chrome, Edge) | Yes; broken letters and reversed lines are repaired |
| Phone apps that export PDF | Usually yes |
| InPage’s own PDF export | Usually no: the fonts do not record which letters they draw |
| A scanner or a phone camera | No: the pages are pictures, not text |
If you are not sure what kind of PDF you have, open it in any PDF reader and try to select a word. If single words highlight, the text can be extracted.
Worked example
Take this line in a PDF saved from a web page:
پاکستان زندہ باد
When you open the PDF here, box 2 shows پاکستان زندہ باد as normal Urdu. Pressing Copy for InPage puts InPage’s codes on the clipboard. Pasted into Notepad, those codes look like nonsense:
پاکستان زندہ باد
ƒœ’„ ‹¦ ‚‹That is exactly what InPage expects. Pasted into an InPage text box, the same codes appear as پاکستان زندہ باد, ready for you to set in Noori Nastaliq at any size. A full page works the same way: every paragraph keeps its line break, and English words and numbers stay in their places.
The Join lines that the PDF wrapped into paragraphs option matters for composing. PDF lines end where the page ran out of room, not where the writer ended a paragraph. With the option on, those lines are joined back into flowing paragraphs, so InPage can wrap them to your own column width. Poetry, headings and short lines are left as they are. Turn the option off if you want every PDF line kept separately.
Common problems and fixes
InPage shows boxes or question marks after pasting
You probably pasted with Copy Urdu text (Unicode) into InPage 2000 or 2.x. Use Copy for InPage instead. If you are using InPage 3 or later, try the opposite.
“No Urdu letters found”
The PDF’s fonts do not say which letters they draw. This is typical of PDFs exported from InPage and of some old newspaper archives. The text cannot be recovered reliably from the PDF. Ask the sender for the .inp file, then copy from InPage and use the InPage to Unicode converter if you need Unicode.
A few characters were left unconverted
The message under the button tells you how many characters have no InPage code, for example emoji or rare symbols. They are left as they are, and you can retype them in InPage.
Some words are split or joined wrongly
Older PDF software sometimes stores spaces in odd places. Correct those words in box 2 before copying. The Urdu Spell Checker can find them quickly in long texts.
Who uses this tool
- Composers and typesetters who receive client material as PDFs and set it in InPage.
- Newspaper and magazine desks laying out press releases, agency copy and government notifications.
- Book publishers bringing authors’ Word-made PDFs into InPage for final page layout.
- Printing and photocopy shops preparing applications, notices and wedding cards from customers’ PDFs.
If you need the text in Microsoft Word rather than InPage, use Urdu PDF to Word. To move text the other way, from InPage to Word, WhatsApp or the web, see InPage to Unicode.
Private by design
Client documents are often confidential. Here, the PDF is opened, read and converted entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored or logged, and the text disappears when you close the tab.