pdf

name pdf description Use this skill whenever the user wants to do anything with PDF files. This includes reading or extracting text/tables from PDFs, combining or merging multiple PDFs into one, splitting PDFs apart, rotating pages, adding watermarks, creating new PDFs, filling PDF forms, encrypting/decrypting PDFs, extracting images, and OCR on scanned PDFs to make them searchable. If the user mentions a .pdf file or asks to produce one, use this skill. license Proprietary. LICENSE.txt has complete terms metadata {"version":"1.2","skill-author":"Anthropic, PBC","source":"https://github.com/anthropics/skills/tree/main/skills/pdf"} PDF Processing Guide Overview This guide covers essential PDF processing operations using Python libraries and command-line tools. For advanced features, JavaScript libraries, and detailed examples, see reference.md. If you need to fill out a PDF form, read forms.md and follow its instructions. Quick Start from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter # Read a PDF reader = PdfReader( "document.pdf" ) print ( f"Pages: { len (reader.pages)} " ) # Extract text text = "" for page in reader.pages: text += page.extract_text() Python Libraries pypdf - Basic Operations Merge PDFs from pypdf import PdfWriter, PdfReader writer = PdfWriter() for pdf_file in [ "doc1.pdf" , "doc2.pdf" , "doc3.pdf" ]: reader = PdfReader(pdf_file) for page in reader.pages: writer.add_page(page) with open ( "merged.pdf" , "wb" ) as output: writer.write(output) Split PDF reader = PdfReader( "input.pdf" ) for i, page in enumerate (reader.pages): writer = PdfWriter() writer.add_page(page) with open ( f"page_ {i+ 1 } .pdf" , "wb" ) as output: writer.write(output) Extract Metadata reader = PdfReader( "document.pdf" ) meta = reader.metadata print ( f"Title: {meta.title} " ) print ( f"Author: {meta.author} " ) print ( f"Subject: {meta.subject} " ) print ( f"Creator: {meta.creator} " ) Rotate Pages reader = PdfReader( "input.pdf" ) writer = PdfWriter() page = reader.pages[ 0 ] page.rotate( 90 ) # Rotate 90 degrees clockwise writer.add_page(page) with open ( "rotated.pdf" , "wb" ) as output: writer.write(output) pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction Extract Text with Layout import pdfplumber with pdfplumber. open ( "document.pdf" ) as pdf: for page in pdf.pages: text = page.extract_text() print (text) Extract Tables with pdfplumber. open ( "document.pdf" ) as pdf: for i, page in enumerate (pdf.pages): tables = page.extract_tables() for j, table in enumerate (tables): print ( f"Table {j+ 1 } on page {i+ 1 } :" ) for row in table: print (row) Advanced Table Extraction import pandas as pd with pdfplumber. open ( "document.pdf" ) as pdf: all_tables = [] for page in pdf.pages: tables = page.extract_tables() for table in tables: if table: # Check if table is not empty df = pd.DataFrame(table[ 1 :], columns=table[ 0 ]) all_tables.append(df) # Combine all tables if all_tables: combined_df = pd.concat(all_tables, ignore_index= True ) combined_df.to_excel( "extracted_tables.xlsx" , index= False ) reportlab - Create PDFs Basic PDF Creation from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas c = canvas.Canvas( "hello.pdf" , pagesize=letter) width, height = letter # Add text c.drawString( 100 , height - 100 , "Hello World!" ) c.drawString( 100 , height - 120 , "This is a PDF created with reportlab" ) # Add a line c.line( 100 , height - 140 , 400 , height - 140 ) # Save c.save() Create PDF with Multiple Pages from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer, PageBreak from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet doc = SimpleDocTemplate( "report.pdf" , pagesize=letter) styles = getSampleStyleSheet() story = [] # Add content title = Paragraph( "Report Title" , styles[ 'Title' ]) story.append(title) story.append(Spacer( 1 , 12 )) body = Paragraph( "This is the body of the report. " * 20 , styles[ 'Normal' ]) story.append(body) story.append(PageBreak()) # Page 2 story.append(Paragraph( "Page 2" , styles[ 'Heading1' ])) story.append(Paragraph( "Content for page 2" , styles[ 'Normal' ])) # Build PDF doc.build(story) Subscripts and Superscripts IMPORTANT : Never use Unicode subscript/superscript characters (₀₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉, ⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹) in ReportLab PDFs. The built-in fonts do not include these glyphs, causing them to render as solid black boxes. Instead, use ReportLab's XML markup tags in Paragraph objects: from reportlab.platypus import Paragraph from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet styles = getSampleStyleSheet() # Subscripts: use <sub> tag chemical = Paragraph( "H<sub>2</sub>O" , styles[ 'Normal' ]) # Superscripts: use <super> tag squared = Paragraph( "x<super>2</super> + y<super>2</super>" , styles[ 'Normal' ]) For canvas-drawn text (not Paragraph objects), manually adjust font the size and position rather than using Unicode subscripts/superscripts. Command-Line Tools pdftotext (poppler-utils) # Extract text pdftotext input.pdf output.txt # Extract text preserving layout pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt # Extract specific pages pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 input.pdf output.txt # Pages 1-5 qpdf # Merge PDFs qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf # Split pages qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf qpdf input.pdf --pages . 6-10 -- pages6-10.pdf # Rotate pages qpdf input.pdf output.pdf --rotate=+90:1 # Rotate page 1 by 90 degrees # Remove password qpdf --password=mypassword --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf pdftk (if available) # Merge pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf # Split pdftk input.pdf burst # Rotate pdftk input.pdf rotate 1east output rotated.pdf Common Tasks Extract Text from Scanned PDFs # Requires: uv pip install pytesseract pdf2image import pytesseract from pdf2image import convert_from_path # Convert PDF to images images = convert_from_path( 'scanned.pdf' ) # OCR each page text = "" for i, image in enumerate (images): text += f"Page {i+ 1 } :\n" text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image) text += "\n\n" print (text) Add Watermark from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter # Create watermark (or load existing) watermark = PdfReader( "watermark.pdf" ).pages[ 0 ] # Apply to all pages reader = PdfReader( "document.pdf" ) writer = PdfWriter() for page in reader.pages: page.merge_page(watermark) writer.add_page(page) with open ( "watermarked.pdf" , "wb" ) as output: writer.write(output) Extract Images # Using pdfimages (poppler-utils) pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix # This extracts all images as output_prefix-000.jpg, output_prefix-001.jpg, etc. Password Protection from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter reader = PdfReader( "input.pdf" ) writer = PdfWriter() for page in reader.pages: writer.add_page(page) # Add password writer.encrypt( "userpassword" , "ownerpassword" ) with open ( "encrypted.pdf" , "wb" ) as output: writer.write(output) Quick Reference Task Best Tool Command/Code Merge PDFs pypdf writer.add_page(page) Split PDFs pypdf One page per file Extract text pdfplumber page.extract_text() Extract tables pdfplumber page.extract_tables() Create PDFs reportlab Canvas or Platypus Command line merge qpdf qpdf --empty --pages ... OCR scanned PDFs pytesseract Convert to image first Fill PDF forms pdf-lib or pypdf (see forms.md) See forms.md Next Steps For advanced pypdfium2 usage, see reference.md For JavaScript libraries (pdf-lib), see reference.md If you need to fill out a PDF form, follow the instructions in forms.md For troubleshooting guides, see reference.md This skill is created and maintained by Anthropic . Vendored here unmodified except for frontmatter metadata and the case of the reference.md / forms.md links, which upstream writes uppercase; see LICENSE.txt for terms.