Where is the arrow cursor?

[shawn100]

I watched many Youtube videos about using LibreOffice Draw to edit pdf files. I was excited to get started. After installing the latest version 7.3, I used draw to open a pdf file (actually I tried many files). In the video, the document would load up with an arrow cursor. Move the cursor around and there are text boxes for editing. Instead of the arrow cursor, I got a “move” cursor of 4 arrows pointing up/down and left/right. The entire page was a big rectangular box with 8 little square boxes for sizing the page. I have spent more hours searching for why I can’t get the arrow cursor without any result. Hope someone here can point me the way. Thanks.

[jfn]

I watched many Youtube videos about using LibreOffice Draw to edit pdf
files. I was excited to get started. After installing the latest version
7.3, I used draw to open a pdf file (actually I tried many files). In
the video, the document would load up with an arrow cursor. Move the
cursor around and there are text boxes for editing. Instead of the arrow
cursor, I got a “move” cursor of 4 arrows pointing up/down and
left/right. The entire page was a big rectangular box with 8 little
square boxes for sizing the page. I have spent more hours searching for
why I can’t get the arrow cursor without any result. Hope someone here
can point me the way. Thanks.

This is probably because the PDF content is not actual text, but an
image of the text. Looks like the PDf was created by scanning a sheet of
paper.

you may test this way: create a document with any LibreOffice module,
say Writer. Export it as PDF (File > Export PDF). Open the PDF: now you
get the pretty arrow

[EarnestAl]

You need to find OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. There is free software available as well as paid-for. There are also online sites that will convert image to text.

Whatever method you use, you will need to check for accuracy and correct errors.

I would suggest to copy and paste as unformatted text into Writer. The formatting from OCR programs can be a nightmare so best to start from scratch. Cheers, Al

[shawn100]

I worked. Thank you @jfn and @EarnestAl for your reply.