pdf-processing

name	pdf-processing
description	Extract text and tables from PDF files, fill forms, merge documents. Use when working with PDF files or when the user mentions PDFs, forms, or document extraction.
author	Joseph OBrien
status	unpublished
updated	2025-12-23
version	1.0.1
tag	skill
type	skill

PDF Processing

Quick start

Use pdfplumber to extract text from PDFs:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    text = pdf.pages[0].extract_text()
    print(text)

Extracting tables

Extract tables from PDFs with automatic detection:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("report.pdf") as pdf:
    page = pdf.pages[0]
    tables = page.extract_tables()

    for table in tables:
        for row in table:
            print(row)

Extracting all pages

Process multi-page documents efficiently:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    full_text = ""
    for page in pdf.pages:
        full_text += page.extract_text() + "\n\n"

    print(full_text)

Form filling

For PDF form filling, see FORMS.md for the complete guide including field analysis and validation.

Merging PDFs

Combine multiple PDF files:

from pypdf import PdfMerger

merger = PdfMerger()

for pdf in ["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "file3.pdf"]:
    merger.append(pdf)

merger.write("merged.pdf")
merger.close()

Splitting PDFs

Extract specific pages or ranges:

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

# Extract pages 2-5
for page_num in range(1, 5):
    writer.add_page(reader.pages[page_num])

with open("output.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Available packages

• pdfplumber - Text and table extraction (recommended)
• pypdf - PDF manipulation, merging, splitting
• pdf2image - Convert PDFs to images (requires poppler)
• pytesseract - OCR for scanned PDFs (requires tesseract)

Common patterns

Extract and save text:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("input.pdf") as pdf:
    text = "\n\n".join(page.extract_text() for page in pdf.pages)

with open("output.txt", "w") as f:
    f.write(text)

Extract tables to CSV:

import pdfplumber
import csv

with pdfplumber.open("tables.pdf") as pdf:
    tables = pdf.pages[0].extract_tables()

    with open("output.csv", "w", newline="") as f:
        writer = csv.writer(f)
        for table in tables:
            writer.writerows(table)

Error handling

Handle common PDF issues:

import pdfplumber

try:
    with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
        if len(pdf.pages) == 0:
            print("PDF has no pages")
        else:
            text = pdf.pages[0].extract_text()
            if text is None or text.strip() == "":
                print("Page contains no extractable text (might be scanned)")
            else:
                print(text)
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Error processing PDF: {e}")

Performance tips

• Process pages in batches for large PDFs
• Use multiprocessing for multiple files
• Extract only needed pages rather than entire document
• Close PDF objects after use