Extract specific data from scanned pdf and place into Excel

Is it possible to extract data from multiple pre-defined locations on hundreds of scanned PDF's and extract/export to excel? Scanned pdf's would have same form and locations of information. I have been able to extract all of information on pages (creates mess) but no way to capture just certain fields/locations?

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Doug McLean

in a word yes, but…

In order to put it all together you're going to need Power Query.

Joe Johnson

OK, I have Power Query. Where to now? I cannot get Bluebeam to select certain areas to extract to even start a power query in excel. Anything online concerning this idea?

Doug McLean

You will also need to write some JavaScript to export the data.
The key is getting it all out.

These PDF's aren't forms are they?

Joe Johnson

GAB ticket.pdf

This is one page of scanned pages. I have marked the two places that need to be input into an excel spreadsheet so I can total. I am not familiar with writing JavaScript. Any ideas on how to scan these spaces and insert into excel, if possible, without writing Java Script?

Doug McLean

Because this is scanned you're going to have a lot of problems trying to do this workflow. Scanned documents are all around bad. I can get the values out with an Export to Excel, but the data is not something that even Power Query can save.

If this was a Form you could easily use the Merge Data function to get what you need.

Is there any way you can have this as an unscanned PDF?

Vince French

I think Claude AI may be your best friend in this situation. However, you may have to wait a month or two for this unless you are on the Beta testing programme.

I've tested this out and it would appear that you're going to be able to get the information that you need using OCR , the Highlight tool and Claude to do some replication.

As I've only got one page to work with all I can do is duplicate that a few times - I ended up with a file with 8 pages.

I then ran OCR on all of the pages.

I then highlighted the four areas - CUSTOMER in Blue, PRODUCT in Green, TONS in yellow and LOADS TODAY in red. This picks up the text underneath and adds it to the Comments column in your markup list.

I then asked Claude to basically repeat all of the four markups on the other pages. I also asked it to adjust the highlight area should the text underneath be a different size (longer).

This was successful - all the data was captured!

I then thought about exporting this metadata to a csv file and working on it in Excel. But, then I thought, I'm using Claude so why not see what it can do!

So, I asked Claude to summarise the data in a spreadsheet using the four items as Column Headers and filling out the details underneath. I also, asked for the Page No details to be added.

The result was….

Pretty impressive stuff by Claude!

It may be worth trying this out with some pages with a few different values on to make sure it works properly. Feel free to upload some more pages if you'd like me to run a test to see what happens.

Vince French

Okay, so having thought about this, I've got rid of a couple of unnecessary stages!

I've run OCR and written the following prompt in Claude: -

With the active Bluebeam file, extract some of the data from each page and create an Excel table using the following column headers: -PAGE No: CUSTOMER: PRODUCT: TONS: LOADS TODAY:

An example of the information to be collected using the first page is as follows: -
PAGE No = 1
CUSTOMER: = CK#
PRODUCT: = 14230 15CR AGGR BASE
TONS: = 19.39
LOADS TODAY: = 127

The result is now: -

I'm pretty sure that you could also collect information such as the Date, Order No, etc if it was available and needed.

David Cutler

That's pretty impressive @Vince French! Almost like having an intern named "Claude" compiling all the data for you. 😎

Vince French

It's just a shame that this Claude doesn't also make a good cup of coffee @David Cutler !

Doug McLean

I was worried about using AI because I couldn't get the data out just using PQ. Good job Vince.
It was all because it was a scanned document. I'm just don't fully trust it.

I still say that in the long run, this should be a form and then you just run the Merge Data workflow.

Vince French

It would definitely be better being a form.

I'm not sure how much I trust this either Doug. I'm thinking I'd run the scenario at least twice and ensure the results match. It will be interesting to re-run this with a bigger set of data.

David Cutler

@Joe Johnson will the quarry provide the tickets as native PDF files? This would save you scanning the tickets and going through the PDF prep. You could then have a process to spot check the collected tickets against the provided electronic ticket. The quarry might even be willing to provide a daily summary report out of there ticketing system which would save having to process all of this data manually anyway.

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