Extracting Text from PDF File

Preparation

Download and install Python from python.org .

Then, open the command prompt and run:

pip install pdfminer

This installs PDFMiner, a Python library for extracting and analyzing text from PDF files. Unlike other PDF tools, PDFMiner focuses on precise text extraction, including font details, text positions, and structure. It also includes a PDF converter for transforming PDFs into formats like HTML.

More details: PDFMiner on PyPI

Extracting Data

PDFMiner provides the pdf2txt.py script, which converts PDFs into Text, XML, or HTML.

To extract text from a PDF, use:

python C:\Python27\Scripts\pdf2txt.py -o test.txt -t text test.pdf

Running Python Scripts from the Package

Use the “External Application” Package Action:

Dealing with Encrypted PDF Files

Use QPDF to decrypt PDFs:

qpdf -password= --decrypt test.pdf test1.pdf