extract data from PDF files?

big-ron

big-ron

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hi all, i work for a mailing company and might be getting a big job at work, 1 million records which is comming in as pdf form? we need to extract the names and address from it and remail sort it, what software is out there that we could use? hope this makes sense guys, they cant do this. plus more money for the little company i work for :)
 
big-ron said:
hi all, i work for a mailing company and might be getting a big job at work, 1 million records which is comming in as pdf form? we need to extract the names and address from it and remail sort it, what software is out there that we could use? hope this makes sense guys, they cant do this. plus more money for the little company i work for :)
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Got any more details? It sounds bizarre that they are sending you something in PDF when it should be in some sort of database!!!!

So, are these PDFs only populated with names and addresses? How are they structured? are they all just in the 1 PDF? What is the ideal senario for your company in how you would like to process these PDFs?

Would something like this be any good? PDF to Excel — 100% Free!
 
Are you shure its in pdf format? Seems like an awkward way to do it, normally i'd expect a csv file that excell could handle.

thebigman
 
there is also a proggy called Nitro pdf that lets u edit pdf documents if u need it mate ill upload it for u
 
Print it out, scan it in and then use OCR software.

Employ a team of indians to re-enter the data into an access database.
 
I think you can OCR PDFs but it is getting the data into the format you want that will be the problem. Maybe it can be done with macros in some OCR software.

Do you have a YT the is not succeptible to carpal tunnel syndrome?
 
biffo1 said:
there is also a proggy called Nitro pdf that lets u edit pdf documents if u need it mate ill upload it for u
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if poss. in hotfile, blooming b/b is so slow atm, cheers
been tinkering about half the day with with omni but think its missing something,
 
With foxit reader you can copy the data and then paste it into something like excel.
 
biffo1 said:
there is also a proggy called Nitro pdf that lets u edit pdf documents if u need it mate ill upload it for u
Click to expand...

thanks for your repleys :)

just tryed Nitro quickly with a small file (12 records) looks ok but, it extracts the hole pdf? what we want is...to get the pdf letter and take out just the names and addresses, not sure why they are doing like there do?, no one is saying now't, all i know is the job is in PDF, sorry guys.

could be the tax thinkly :( , thats me just thinking.

what i'm thinking is that someone has took a job on saying they can do it, now they cant, and now asking us, which is great for us :) but need to find a way of doing it as easy as possible, any ideas how big the file would be? 1 milion records in PDF format? daff i know. also how long would take to convert to a txt or excel file. so can go in and the the names and address from it? need it in a csv file would be great.

"going home now head done in"
 
bod said:
if poss. in hotfile, blooming b/b is so slow atm, cheers
been tinkering about half the day with with omni but think its missing something,
Click to expand...

no problem mate on its way matey
 
Depending on what info you need you could use UK Info Pro disks. They have every person on the electoral role, all listed phone numbers plus all registered businesses in the UK. And the program outputs CSV files, I know cos my boss made me (well asked) to extract every business within a certain type so he could setup a junk mailing. Ended up with a CSV file with almost 750,000 business names, addresses & phone numbers, with business type, industry and stuff.

The UK Info disks are about on the newsgroups I think.
 
big-ron said:
what i'm thinking is that someone has took a job on saying they can do it, now they cant, and now asking us, which is great for us :) but need to find a way of doing it as easy as possible, any ideas how big the file would be? 1 milion records in PDF format? daff i know. also how long would take to convert to a txt or excel file. so can go in and the the names and address from it? need it in a csv file would be great.
Click to expand...

I don't think the file would have to be huge, depends whats in it.

Once converted to txt of some type, it would be easy to write a bit of vbscript or something to parse the file and pull out the data.
 
oneman said:
I don't think the file would have to be huge, depends whats in it.

Once converted to txt of some type, it would be easy to write a bit of vbscript or something to parse the file and pull out the data.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking... Maybe a small bespoke program to extract the info... Not sure how much something like that would cost, but might be justified depending on the price you get on this job...
 
madeinbeats said:
That's what I was thinking... Maybe a small bespoke program to extract the info... Not sure how much something like that would cost, but might be justified depending on the price you get on this job...
Click to expand...

yes we are looking into that also :) the lad in the office is good at this kind of stuff.
 
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