Home > Forum Home > Developing Business Administration Solutions > Importing Data from PDF Files Share

Importing Data from PDF Files

Excel Help for Importing Data From Pdf Files in Developing Business Administration Solutions


Forum TopicPost Reply Login

Importing Data From Pdf Files

Rate this:
(4.2/5 from 24 votes)
Happy Business Spreadsheets has developed a free Excel program to extract and import PDF data into Excel which can be downloaded and used without restriction.

There is a common need to extract and import specific data from PDF files into Excel. Since Excel does not natively support the reading of PDF content, utilities are needed to convert the PDF file content for the Excel format. Several commercial applications accomplish this; however it is often the case where only specific data is required to be imported from multiple PDF files into one structured format.

We created such an application by using VBA code in conjunction with an open source PDF to Text conversion utility, which can be found at Foolabs.

[Download the free PDF data import Excel program here]

The program relies on the conversion utility (included in the download) and all PDF files to reside in the same directory as the Excel application. Text or data to extract are defined in the Control sheet by specifying start text, end text and multiple replacements routines with wildcard support. This enables flexibility to obtain comparable data from multiple PDF files based on patterns independent of different PDF file structures.

As many extraction rules as required can be set in order to create a table of information imported by extraction rule and PDF file name. Information on how to set up rules is available within the Excel application with a help icon and cell comments. The VBA code is commented and open for modification.

Any improvements or new features to the code are welcome to be posted here so that we can update the download version to the benefit of everyone.
 Excel Business Forums Administrator
 Posted by on
 
Replies - Displaying 11 to 20 of 88Order Replies By: Most Recent | Chronological | Highest Rated
Grateful
Rate this:
(4/5 from 2 votes)
What can I say...

CONGRATS!!!

It's Excellent! 
It is working correctly for the test file, i'll be conducting more tests tomorrow when i get more test files.

THANK'S!

 Alexandre
 Posted by on
Confused
Rate this:
(4/5 from 2 votes)
Hi
Thanks a lot for this great tool. it works like a charm.
Only one thing I am not having any luck with. I have a number displayed as a percentage in the pdf document and I only want to import the number as is, but not the percentage symbol. I would appreciate any help on how to do this.

Here is an example:

in the pdf I have this line:
Making up a number 0.5 %   10.0 %

I used the following to import the numbers:
Start Text     End Text      Replacement Pairs
number        %*              number,|%

When I 'Run Extraction' I get the following output:
0.5      10.0

so my question is how do I get the program to only return the number 0.5 and not the 10.0

Thanks
 Posted by on
Confused
Rate this:
(4/5 from 2 votes)
Thanks for the tip, I actually went back and counted all the spaces between the % and the following number 10.0. I found 7 spaces so I inserted them in the 'Replacement Pairs' and that seems to fix the issue. Thanks again.
 Posted by on
Confused
Rate this:
(4/5 from 2 votes)
Thank you so much for creating such useful program. Could i get code written for this program using VBA? it will be very beneficial to me. 

Warm Regards.

 Posted by on
Confused
Rate this:
(4/5 from 2 votes)
Hi,

I love the file and it works for the pdf's that you gave as an example.  I am trying to use it for pdf's of bank statements.  I have another file with macros that reconciles bank activity to GL ledger activity and marks with an x anything that reconciles leaving your reconciling items.  The issue I have is we only get bank statement activity in PDF format.  Your file and code would work perfectly if I could use the control text tab and place the column headings as text to search for in the pdf and it drops in all the text details on the pdf below that column heading?  I am not sure if it is possible since it is searching for text and this is on the lines below the text.  Any suggestions?
 Anthony
 Posted by on
Confused
Rate this:
(3/5 from 1 vote)
Hello!
Thanks for this program, it runs pretty great. But the downloadable version doesn't seem to  be the newest version as describe in the comments. Could anybody verify this? And if not, is the newest  version still available?

Also one more question:
How much has been changed in the Xpdf program? or the program reliace on the original unedited version?

Thanks in advance,
Johhny!
 Posted by on
Confused
Rate this:
(3/5 from 1 vote)
Thanks for your reply!
I was looking through the comments, and it has been mentioned that the pipe character has been replaced with ^^^. Which does not seem to be the case for the version mentioned above. (Eventhough this is not very difficult to change..).

So I thought it was not the updated version, and was afraid it might be missing some other functions.

Thanks!
 Posted by on
Confused
Rate this:
(3/5 from 1 vote)
Really great tool. My case is a little bit different. I need to rename lots of pdf files based on the first line. How should I modify the code to have as START point the beginning of the pdf as it is not always the same? Thank you.
 Posted by on
Oops
Rate this:
(3/5 from 1 vote)
This is definitely something that would be good to add to the code as an option. At the moment, the last instance is returned as the result.  The code loops through each line of the text content of the PDF looking for the start pattern and end pattern and saving the part in between in memory. The prt of code in the Run_Extraction() routine that gets the text is right before the end of the loop as:

VBA Code:
'test if in text gathering blCont and append
If blCont = True And strTemp <> "" And Not strLine Like "*" & cs & "*" Then
        strTemp = strTemp & Chr(10) & Trim(strLine)
End If

This needs to be modified with another variable to hold what was previously found and appended to the overall result.
 Excel Business Forums Administrator
 Posted by on
Confused
Rate this:
(3/5 from 1 vote)
Hi, this is very neat and quite useful. Nice work.

I was wondering, is there was someway to make this work with interactive Pdf Forms? The idea is to create a fillable form (I use Foxit Phantom) and distribute to users in the ubiquitous pdf format. They fill it and return it and then we extract the data into an excel sheet.

This would be a great addition if possible. Specially because the great thing about your tool is that it skips the need for the user to convert the file to a .xls manually. I cannot seem to find any way to do this, without actually having my end user first convert to xls and then import. When the forms number in the thousands, that's just impracticle.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 
 "In all things, be men"
 Posted by on
 Displaying page 2 of 9 

Excel templates and solutions matched for Importing Data from PDF Files:

Solutions: Export MapPoint Waypoints Survey Data Analysis