Handling PDF files with VBA

[LuAlPa]

We receive PDF files resembling Excel files. Same position, same data type, over and over again.
Has anyone developed a means of opening a PDF file from VBA and getting data into variables? After that generating the Excel file with just the data I need is simple enough. (PDF documents go from 5 to 20 pages of data)
Thank you in advance

 

[Aubs010]

How very coincidental! I am looking for the very same answer, and we're only 3 days apart! Have you had any luck with this?

Aubs

 

[LuAlPa]

Nothing so far. I have investigated a few products that are around and the only one with some promise seems to be PDFGrabber which transforms PDF into an excel spreadsheet with as many worksheets as necesswary. But nothing from the VBA community

 

[Aubs010]

Hi LuAlPa,

Thanks for your reply.

At work, I have a copy of Acrobat Professional 7 (there may be a trial version available) which has the functionality of SAVE AS, and with the pdf's I have, when I use this and change the Save as type to "Text (Plain).txt" it puts double spaces between cells

so a table:
[tt]
| ID | Name | Address |
| 1 | Aubs Me | My Street |
| 2 | Your Name | Your Street |
[/tt]
would appear:
[tt]
1 Aubs Me My Street
2 Your Name Your Street
[/tt]

Which is then simple to convert into an Access table.

How do you currently import the tables?

I wonder if there is a way of programatically 'asking' Acrobat to save as plain text and then importing?

Worth a look into.

Aubs

 

[LuAlPa]

Hi Aubs,
At present I am not processing them in any way except by trying to use PDFgrabber. But the option of exporting using Acrobat Professional is a venue worth exploring. Thank you.

 

[sxschech]

For data extraction off of PDF and other electronic reports, take a look at Monarch.

http://monarch.datawatch.com/monarch-pro.asp

Monarch can be automated/manipulated with VBA as well.

 

[Aubs010]

Thanks sxschech, but I'm doing it as a persona thing so don't want to pay!

I have however found this which may help, if not do it. I've not tried it yet, but will be soon

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cach...pdf&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

NOTE: It's not written for VBA but someone may be able to convert.



Aubs