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 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: 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