Reading text from PDF

[jumpjack]

Is it possibile to use VBA to extract text from PDF files?

-- Jumpjack --

 

[BobRodes]

Yes, and maybe without spending a great deal of money, too. Search the web for things like "extract text programmatically pdf file

 

[Swi]

I got this code from Planet PDF a long time ago but you need to have the full version of Acrobat installed.
j

Private Sub getBodyTextPDF()

    'instantiate the adobe object that we are going to use
    'we are using this object b/c this is the only object i
    'could find that had a function that returned the number of
    'pages in a prf file.  the number of pages is important later on
    Set myPDFPageCount = CreateObject("acroexch.pddoc")
    
    'when we open the file it will return true/false
    filelocation = txtFileName.Text
    openResult = myPDFPageCount.Open(filelocation)
    
    'little but of error handling, if we cannot open the file properly
    If openResult = False Then
        Set myPDFPageCount = Nothing
        MsgBox "Error opening file"
        Exit Sub
    End If
    
    'get the number of pages
    pageCount = myPDFPageCount.GetNumPages
    
    'when we close the file it will return truw/false
    closeResult = myPDFPageCount.Close
    
    'little but of error handling, if we cannot open the file properly
    If closeResult = False Then
        Set myPDFPageCount = Nothing
        MsgBox "Error closing file"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    'destroy the object we do not need it anymore
    Set myPDFPageCount = Nothing
    
    'i could only figure out how to get text from one page at a time
    'so i decided to run a loop that would get the text from a file
    'one page at a time. (adobe counts the first page)

    'instantiate object that we are going to use to get the text
    Set myPDF = CreateObject("acroexch.pddoc")
    
    'once again open the file
    openResult = myPDF.Open(filelocation)

    For pagenumber = 0 To pageCount - 1
        DoEvents
        getPDFTextFromPage pagenumber
        lblStatus.Caption = "Extracting : " & pagenumber + 1 & " of " & pageCount
    Next
    
    Set myPDF = Nothing

End Sub

Private Sub getPDFTextFromPage(pagenumber As Integer)

    'create pdf page object, with a specified page
    Set myPDFPage = myPDF.AcquirePage(pagenumber)

    'create a hilite object, this hilite object is what we will use to extract
    'the text, if you can hilite text then you can pull it out of the pdf file.
    Set myPageHilite = CreateObject("acroexch.hilitelist")
    
    'returns true/false, we are setting the parameters of the hilite object,
    'we are telling the hilite object that when you are called hilite the
    'entire page (0-9000)
    hiliteResult = myPageHilite.Add(0, 9000)

    'we are now going to hilite the page specified
    Set pageSelect = myPDFPage.CreatePageHilite(myPageHilite)
    
    'when pdf hilites it breaks up the page into little pieces so when we try
    'to extract that data from the hilite we ger it in little chuncks so have to loop
    'the data togther and append it together.
    
    'we can also use the same string  (pdfData to append all the pages together)
    For i = 0 To pageSelect.GetNumText - 1
        DoEvents
        pdfData = pdfData & pageSelect.GetText(i)
    Next
    pdfData = pdfData & vbFormFeed
    'clean up

    Set myPDFPage = Nothing
    Set myPageHilite = Nothing
    Set pageSelect = Nothing
    
End Sub

Swi

 

[jumpjack]

I found a lot of methods to extract text from PDF having Acrobat installed.... but NONE with just acrobat reader!
So, I think it's a licence issue: maybe Adobe does not allow developers to code SW which allow PDF text extraction... :-(

-- Jumpjack --

 

[SBerthold]

If the developer has the full version, isn't there a re-distributable ActiveX component included?

 

[macropod]

Hi jumpjack,

You might be able to get around the need for Acrobat by installing Ghostscript. One of Ghostscript's utilities is PDF2TXT - to convert PDFs to text. You can download Ghostscript free from

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

Cheers

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[SBerthold]

Here is another source of free PDF tools:

http://www.pdf995.com/