# Documents

Drop a PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Markdown, text or RTF file and copy its text in any format.

1. Choose Open Document from the menu bar icon, or Read a document in the main window. A small window opens.
2. Drop a file on it, or press Choose a file (Cmd+O on macOS, Ctrl+O elsewhere).
3. Lass0 reads every page, sorts the text into headings, paragraphs, lists and tables, and copies it in your default format. Pick another format in the result to copy it again.

| Format | Files | How the structure is found |
| --- | --- | --- |
| PDF | .pdf | Sorted by the on-device model |
| Word | .docx | Read from the file |
| PowerPoint | .pptx | Read from the file |
| Markdown | .md, .markdown | Read from the file |
| Plain text | .txt, .text | Sorted by the on-device model |
| Rich text | .rtf | From the file, with the model for plain runs of text |

PDFs are read page by page. Pages with a text layer use it directly; pages that are only an image, such as a scan, go through the same on-device text recognition as a screen capture. Lines from consecutive pages are sorted together, so a table or list that crosses a page break comes out whole.

Accuracy comes before speed. The model checks its own grouping against the original lines; a part that fails is tried again and then split into smaller parts. If it still fails, nothing is copied and the window says which pages it could not lay out. A two page PDF takes under a minute on an Apple M1 Pro. Files up to 200 MB are accepted.

A document is saved to your timeline like a capture, under its file name, and counts against the same weekly allowance as a capture in that format.

### If a document won't open

| Message | What to do |
| --- | --- |
| This is an older Office file | Open it in Word or PowerPoint and save it as .docx or .pptx. |
| This PDF is locked | Open it, save a copy without the password, and drop that. |
| No text in this document | The file has no text and no images of text. |
| Couldn't lay this out | The model's grouping failed its checks for the pages named. Nothing was copied. Try again; if it fails again, send feedback. |

[Lass0 docs](https://www.lass0.com/docs)