PDF Data Extraction

PDF data extraction, also called PDF scraping, is a process of retrieving data trapped within a PDF. Explore what Datalogics, an Adobe Portfolio Partner, can do to optimize your data extraction.

Why Is PDF Data Extraction Important?

PDFs are relied upon as a common document standard across all users and organizations; as such, lots of information is contained in billions of PDF documents. With so much information locked away, almost every industry can find themselves needing a data extraction solution. A hospital may need to extract patient information to make it searchable, or a financial firm needs to pull contract terms and metadata from thousands of contracts.

Accessing data from PDFs in bulk can be quite challenging. Data stored within a PDF is not always easily accessible, and poor extraction software might not be up to the task. Datalogics will help you to find the right extraction solution for your use case.

What Are Some Common Data Extraction Problems?

Unable to accurately extract text from images within documents
Documents that contain multiple languages causes issued with output data
Table extraction output is incorrect, misleading or formatted poorly
Visual formatting of the data extracted does not accurately reflect source document

Why Use Datalogics To Optimize Your Data Extraction?

Datalogics is an Adobe Portfolio Partner with expertise in PDF data extraction. We help developers deliver digital document solutions by integrating PDF data extraction functionality into large scale enterprise workflows, and into application development. Our team of digital document specialists and professionals are at your fingertips. View the list below to get an idea of how we can help you with data extraction.

Multiple File Format Options

So you’ve successfully extracted all the needed data from your purchase orders. The next step is to plug this into your existing workflow, but your tool was only able to export your data as a CSV file. You need an XML file to upload to your database. Our solutions give you the choice from a wide array of file types for your data export. HTML output maintains the style and formatting of the PDF, XML & JSON for structured data, and CSV for databases or CMS imports.

Multi-Language & OCR Support

Eventually you’ll find yourself needing to handle PDFs that include images with text. These could be images of graph data, advertisements, a receipt, or anything else. To get this data out, you’ll need to use an OCR enabled extraction tool. OCR will scan images for text and then add the data to the export file.

If you buy or sell to foreign businesses, you’ll sometimes find yourself dealing with documents that contain multiple languages. This can often cause issues with the outputted data or formatting. Datalogics solutions can process PDFs that contain multiple languages, including English, Dutch, French, German, and more.

Advanced Table Processing

If you’ve ever tried to extract tables from financial reports, you know that it can often result in messy, inaccurate, and poorly formatted data. Datalogics extraction technology accurately pulls out tables while maintaining original column and header data. Extracted tables keep formatting consistent; important data no longer needs to be trapped within PDFs.

Robust Forms Extraction

The medical industry (and a lot more) relies heavily on the use of fillable-forms. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to let patients fill out these forms in a web browser, so answers can be stored directly in the database. Instead of rebuilding those forms from scratch, you can use Datalogics extraction technology to pull those forms from your PDFs.

Extract forms from your PDF and convert to HTML forms for your web experience. Common form actions (submit, print, launch, etc.) can also be converted to JavaScript actions, preserving functionality of the form.

How Can Data Extraction Help In Your Industry?

Healthcare

A hospital will see thousands of patient intake forms, medical history documents, and so much more. That's just the patient side; medical workers will also create a healthy flow of documents that may need to be dealt with. Over time these documents stack up, and eventually you'll need to pull specific data in bulk.

With our robust extraction technology, you can pull out important medical data to be stored in a database. Ensuring all important data isn't locked inside hard-to-search PDFs will save hospital staff some much needed time.

Government

Government offices handle a ton of documentation. Forms, tax returns, budgets, purchase orders, receipts, and more. Handling that much data can be a big hassle if it's still trapped within PDFs. It would be a lot easier if you could access the data from those research reports directly from the database.

Even if you're handling documents with multiple languages (English, Spanish, or more), our extraction solutions will help streamline your data extraction workflow.

Legal

Being prepared for a case usually means a ton of hours being used to find specific information locked in thousands of documents. It would be much easier if clerks could find pertinent information via keyword or topic.

Our data extraction can help streamline the research process by pulling data in bulk and uploading to a database or CMS. Save time, money, and headaches by eliminating the bulk of manual research.

Education

Working in higher education means dealing with a lot of documents. If you have research staff, you may also need to manage their reports and papers. There's also the mountain of documents that come from students, including transcripts, applications, invoices, and more.

Using data extraction technology helps to streamline the collection of data in bulk. Export extracted data to file types best suited for integration with a database or content management system (CMS).

Have More Questions? Get In Touch NOW

Check Out These Use Cases

Global Pharma Company Increases Company-Wide Productivity w/ Extraction

A global healthcare and pharmaceutical company needed a tool with reliable and accurate text mining capabilities that could automate information extraction from PDFs to make them searchable.

They chose to use PDF Alchemist, our command-line application tuned for data extraction. They were able to use PDF Alchemist to extract pertinent data from patents and quality assurance documents. The result was an increase of productivity and quick information sharing throughout the organization.

Financial Company Needs Extraction To Go Through Contracts After Expansion

A large financial company recently acquired a company and needed a way to efficiently pull terms and metadata from thousands of contracts. The contracts were different enough to rule out using regular expressions search as an option.

They used PDF Alchemist, our command line application, as a solution. PDF Alchemist was able to capture the needed information efficiently and in bulk, saving the company a ton of time and money.

Extra Resources

BLOG: Form with Function, Part One: Digital Forms
BLOG: PDF Alchemist: Extend PDF Conversion w/ XSLT
BLOG: Learn About PDF Data Extraction at DSF ’19
BLOG: Experimenting with Text Extraction

BLOG: Text Layout: Experiment w/ Text Extraction
BLOG: DevWeek 2018: Doc Quality & Data Extraction
BLOG: Extract Data from PDFs with PDF Alchemist 2.3
BLOG: Search and Extract Pages w/ PDF Java Toolkit

Which Datalogics Products Are Right for You?

Datalogics offers a suite of products to help you with your data extraction needs. If you just need something that your IT department or internal dev team can manage, then we have what you need. On the flip side, if you’re creating your own projects/products and need robust toolkits & SDKs; we have what you’re looking for.

For OEMs

Adobe PDF Library

APDFL is built with the same core technology Adobe used to build Acrobat. Designed for C++, .NET(C#), .NET Core and Java interfaces.

Extract data from PDFs at scale
Scrape text, metadata, and images
Build extraction capabilities into your own product

For OEMs

PDF Java Toolkit

An SDK designed for Java developers; PDF Java Toolkit includes comprehensive support for data extraction. Build robust applications with PDF Java Toolkit.

Supports text, image, and other data extraction
Extract data from AcroForms and XFA forms
Create your own Java applications

For IT and Internal Devs

PDF Alchemist

PDF Alchemist is an easy to use, low-code Command Line Application designed for efficient data extraction.

Extract and scrape structured data from PDFs
Export data as HTML, XML, JSON, CSV, and more
Advanced table processing maintains original formatting
Transform trapped PDF forms into HTML forms w/ working JavaScript actions

Have Any Questions About PDF Data Extraction?

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