for those with acrobat installed, there are a couple c# members that can get all words of a PDF document:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/xmlandnetfx/thread/4a9fb479-b48e-4366-ad39-02b2dac674f5/
as posted by gg1
for course this options may not be viable if you think of distributing your application for profit or if you need format
In summary the link has the fllowing sample code and some adobe website refereces:
// the following will allow word extraction by pdf file spec
// opening the pdf document is rather crude and need to be more robust
public static string getTextFromPDF(string filespec)
{
Acrobat.AcroAppClass gAppClass = new Acrobat.AcroAppClass();
Acrobat.AcroAVDoc avDoc = (Acrobat.AcroAVDoc)gAppClass.GetInterface("Acrobat.AcroAVDoc"); //Visible pdf document with a UI Window
avDoc.Open(System.IO.Path.GetFullPath(filespec), System.IO.Path.GetFileName(filespec));
AcroPDDoc doc = (AcroPDDoc)avDoc.GetPDDoc();
string txt = PdDocGetText(doc);
doc.Close();
avDoc.Close(1);
gAppClass.Exit();
return txt;
}
// slightly modified version of a post in adobe forum by originally by Eldrarak82
private static string PdDocGetText(AcroPDDoc pdDoc)
{
AcroPDPage page;
int pages = pdDoc.GetNumPages();
string pageText = "";
for (int i = 0; i < pages; i++)
{
page = (AcroPDPage)pdDoc.AcquirePage(i);
object jso, jsNumWords, jsWord;
List<string> words = new List<string>();
try
{
jso = pdDoc.GetJSObject();
if (jso != null)
{
object[] args = new object[] { i };
jsNumWords = jso.GetType().InvokeMember("getPageNumWords", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, jso, args, null);
int numWords = Int32.Parse(jsNumWords.ToString());
for (int j = 0; j <= numWords; j++)
{
object[] argsj = new object[] { i, j, false };
jsWord = jso.GetType().InvokeMember("getPageNthWord", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, jso, argsj, null);
words.Add((string)jsWord);
}
}
foreach (string word in words)
{
pageText += word;
}
}
catch
{
}
}
return pageText;
}
the above code sample has yet to be fully tested and may need improvement. nonetheless it is a good starting point.
for those interested in tables, rows and columns, look up the doucments by adobe like
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/a crobat/pdfs/plugin_apps_developer_guide.pdf
around page 130ish to 136
the link
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/plugin_apps_developer_guide.pdf
may also be helpfull for a lot other tasks.
