excel - Extract Data from PDF and Add to Worksheet

Question

I am trying to extract the data from a PDF document into a worksheet. The PDFs show and text can be manually copied and pasted into the Excel document.

I am currently doing this through SendKeys and it is not working. I get an error when I try to paste the data from the PDF document. Why is my paste not working? If I paste after the macro has stopped running it pastes as normal.

Dim myPath As String, myExt As String
Dim ws As Worksheet
Dim openPDF As Object
'Dim pasteData As MSForms.DataObject
Dim fCell As Range

'Set pasteData = New MSForms.DataObject
Set ws = Sheets("DATA")
If ws.Cells(ws.Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row > 1 Then Range("A3:A" & ws.Cells(ws.Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row).ClearContents

myExt = "*.pdf"
'When Scan Receipts Button Pressed Scan the selected folder/s for receipts
For Each fCell In Range(ws.Cells(1, 1), ws.Cells(1, ws.Cells(1, ws.Columns.Count).End(xlToLeft).Column))
    myPath = Dir(fCell.Value & myExt)
    Do While myPath <> ""
        myPath = fCell.Value & "" & myPath
        Set openPDF = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
        openPDF.Open (myPath)
        Application.Wait Now + TimeValue("00:00:2")
        SendKeys "^a"
        Application.Wait Now + TimeValue("00:00:2")
        SendKeys "^c"
        'Application.Wait Now + TimeValue("00:00:2")
        ws.Select
        ActiveSheet.Paste
        'pasteData.GetFromClipboard

        'ws.Cells(3, 1) = pasteData.GetText
        Exit Sub

        myPath = Dir
    Loop

Next fCell

Answer 1

You can open the PDF file and extract its contents using the Adobe library (which I believe you can download from Adobe as part of the SDK, but it comes with certain versions of Acrobat as well)

Make sure to add the Library to your references too (On my machine it is the Adobe Acrobat 10.0 Type Library, but not sure if that is the newest version)

Even with the Adobe library it is not trivial (you'll need to add your own error-trapping etc):

Function getTextFromPDF(ByVal strFilename As String) As String
   Dim objAVDoc As New AcroAVDoc
   Dim objPDDoc As New AcroPDDoc
   Dim objPage As AcroPDPage
   Dim objSelection As AcroPDTextSelect
   Dim objHighlight As AcroHiliteList
   Dim pageNum As Long
   Dim strText As String

   strText = ""
   If (objAvDoc.Open(strFilename, "") Then
      Set objPDDoc = objAVDoc.GetPDDoc
      For pageNum = 0 To objPDDoc.GetNumPages() - 1
         Set objPage = objPDDoc.AcquirePage(pageNum)
         Set objHighlight = New AcroHiliteList
         objHighlight.Add 0, 10000 ' Adjust this up if it's not getting all the text on the page
         Set objSelection = objPage.CreatePageHilite(objHighlight)

         If Not objSelection Is Nothing Then
            For tCount = 0 To objSelection.GetNumText - 1
               strText = strText & objSelection.GetText(tCount)
            Next tCount
         End If
      Next pageNum
      objAVDoc.Close 1
   End If

   getTextFromPDF = strText

End Function

What this does is essentially the same thing you are trying to do - only using Adobe's own library. It's going through the PDF one page at a time, highlighting all of the text on the page, then dropping it (one text element at a time) into a string.

Keep in mind what you get from this could be full of all kinds of non-printing characters (line feeds, newlines, etc) that could even end up in the middle of what look like contiguous blocks of text, so you may need additional code to clean it up before you can use it.

Hope that helps!