Find a keyword in a PDF

Question

Hello everyone,

I'm struggling a little in searching for a keyword in a PDF. "The issue is not in opening the PDF"

The issue is in the process of searching for the keyword.

I'm using a macro to go search for the keyword in the PDF, but I'm not getting any good result.

I would like the result to be something like this:

Contains "1234"Yes

The column name contains my keyword (1234) and the column name is replaced with any keyword I put.

Thank you.

Shifty · Answer

@BS_THE_ANALYST - lovely comprehensive answers. Even I could follow along! 😜

BS_THE_ANALYST · Answer

@MonaAlmutairi To answer your question, Yes, you could apply this to loads of files. It's just a matter of processing time. Should be okay though! Just test that it works for 20, then once you're confident, open the flood gates. We will need to edit the logic slightly to account for lots of files coming in. Currently, we only have accounted for one in the workflow.

Firstly, this is where the PDF to text tool is:

Now for the workflow:

1) Drag the pdfs into a folder, I've got two in here for test purposes.
2) Drag a directory tool onto the workflow. This will allow us to gain access to the filepaths (we'll use this in the PDF tool)
3) Configure the directory tool to the correct folder location.
4) You can now see the file paths for your pdfs in Alteryx. (make sure you click run on the canvas to load them in)

Now the rest is kinda like we did before:
First step, remove the additional columns from the directory tool output (we only need FullPath):

Next step drag the PDF to text tool onto the canvas. Make sure you configure the option Column with File Path to the Full Path field. This will allow us to bring multiple PDFs through!

As you can see above in the field called 'File', I have both of those documents in here now.

Now let's employ the same logic as before. I'm adding a few tweaks in there. I realise you want a table output that tells us whether or not there is. Here is the logic I'd use for this: (it's not the only way, just what came to mind).

I've attached the workflow. Let me know if you have any questions.

All the best,
BS

PDF_Checking.yxmd

MonaAlmutairi · Answer

@BS_THE_ANALYST That is wonderful!!! Thank you so much. How do you think we can apply this to a high number of files? I had like 500+ PDFs to search in. What is the best way to apply the same logic in this case?

+ I could not find the tool PDF to text; I had the intelligence suite but it isn't there.