The PDF file is scanned and does not contain any ‘selectable’ text.
There are several reasons why it can be hard to convert a PDF file to Excel. How do I convert a PDF to Excel without losing formatting?
This article explains how to easily convert PDF to Excel using Docparser’s free PDF to Excel converter. However, batch converting PDFs to Excel can be a challenging task without the right tools. Their ability to be viewed from a broad range of environments makes them especially appealing for exchanging important data. To convert to CSV, XML or HTML simply change c.xlsx to be c.csv,Ĭ.xml or c.htmlrespectively.PDFs are used for a variety of reasons from Business, to Government and Education. You would like it to be called upon output: output. Finally, the third line is telling Python to convert the file with name input.pdf to xlsx and also what This means here at PDFTables we know which account is using the API and how many Line is calling the PDFTables API with your unique API key. The first line is simply importing the PDFTables API toolset, so that Python knows what to do when certain actions are called. To find your converted spreadsheet, navigate to the folder in your file explorer and hey presto, you've converted a PDF to Excel or CSV with Python!
cd C:/Users/Bob) to the folder you saved your convert-pdf.py script and PDF in, then run the following command: python convert-pdf.py Open your command line/terminal and change your directory (e.g. If you don’t understand the script above, see the script overview section. Now, save your finished script as convert-pdf.py in the same directory as the PDF document you'd like to convert.
Or if you'd prefer to install it manually, you can download it from python-pdftables-api then install it with: python setup.py install Step 3Ĭreate a new Python script then add the following code: import pdftables_api If git is not recognised, download it here. In your terminal/command line, install the PDFTables Python library with: pip install git+ Pip gives a simple way to install the PDFTables API Python package.įor this tutorial, I'll be using the Windows Python IDLE Shell, but the instructions are almost identical for Linux and Mac. Downloading Anaconda means that pip will also be installed. You can use either Python 3.6.x or 2.7.x, as the PDFTables API works with both. If you haven't already, install Anaconda on your machine from Anaconda website.
In order to properly test the library, make sure you have a PDF handy! Step 1 Here's an example of a PDF that I've converted with the library.
In this tutorial, I'll be showing you how to get the library set up on your local machine and then use it to convert PDF to Excel, with Python. Our API will enable you to convert PDFs without uploading each one manually. You can convert your PDF to Excel, CSV, XML or HTML with Python using the PDFTables API.