A "permission denied" message, or text that simply won't highlight, has a small set of causes. Rather than guessing, run the short diagnosis tree below. Each branch ends in a concrete fix for a document you own.
Diagnosis tree
- Did the file ask for a password to open?
Yes → It has a Document Open password. You must supply it before any copy is possible; there's no bypass. See what unlocking means.
No → Continue to step 2. - Zoom in on the "text." Is it crisp (vector) or blurry (image)?
Blurry / photo-like → It's a scanned image with no text layer. Skip to Fix B (OCR).
Crisp / sharp → It's real text behind a restriction. Go to Fix A. - After removing security, does copying work?
No → Suspect corruption or an unusual security scheme, see why won't my PDF unlock.
Fix A: Remove the copy restriction (real text)
- Browser tool: Clear owner-password flags with our in-browser unlocker, then reopen and select.
- Acrobat Pro: Tools → Protect → Encrypt → Remove Security (full steps).
- Preview / LibreOffice: Re-export without encryption; the copy allows selection.
More context on this specific restriction in enabling copying text.
Fix B: OCR a scanned page
There's nothing to copy from an image until you generate a text layer:
- Acrobat Pro: Tools → Scan & OCR → Recognize Text.
- Google Drive: Upload the PDF, then open it with Google Docs to pull out recognised text.
- Free/offline: Tesseract-based utilities.
OCR isn't perfect on low-quality scans, proofread the extracted text, especially numbers and names.