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Abstractors use the information provided in the documents you upload in Registration to validate and complete trial data in Protocol Abstraction (PA). To facilitate data entry, the abstractors may copy and paste information from your documents into fields in the PA interface.

Trial-related documents uploaded as Microsoft Word (.doc), Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, or .xlsb), and WordPerfect files contain text that abstractors can copy and paste directly. PDFs (portable document format) contain text that abstractors can copy  only if the content was created from other text-based applications such as Word or Excel.


Abstractors can not copy and paste text from scanned documents

Avoid uploading PDFs of scanned documents. They can not be edited, copied, or read with OCR (optical character recognition) applications.

Adobe provides a plug-in for most text-based word processing applications that enables you to convert your files to PDFs. Once you have converted the files, you can read the documents in Adobe Reader. Others can read the content as well but are not able to make changes to your file. You can download the Adobe PDF Reader for free from the Adobe website Exit Disclaimer logo .

Microsoft provides instructions for converting files to PDFs both on their website Exit Disclaimer logo and in the Help documentation in each of its applications.


When searching for help, use "save file as pdf" as the search term.

You do not need a document converter in Mac OSX. Instead, print your documents to a PDF file.

How to Convert Text-Based Files to PDFs in Mac OSX

  1. Open your text file in its original format (such as .doc or .xls).
  2. Click File > Print.
  3. In the Print window, click the PDF button at the bottom-left and select the Save as PDF option.
  4. Choose the file location, rename your PDF file, and then click Save.
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