Forum Discussion
PDFs as a data source
Amiregent,
There's currently no solution to import PDF data into Power BI Desktop. This data source is in our radar, as we have received some requests in the past, but we don't have any immediate plans to add it to the product.
If this is an important feature for you, please leave a vote for it in our UserVoice Feature Suggestions forum. Please also leave a description about the type of data that you need to extract from the PDF document. For instance, are you trying to extract one/multiple tables from the document, or plain text?
Thanks,
M.
Hello Jim. We need a solution to pull in a PDF document from a website on a recurring basis and import to Power BI.
Can you please provide further details on the VBA solution can help?
Thanks.
As I mentioned in my reply to your Private Message, if I can get a copy of the PDF file and a good description of the information you would like to extract from it to Excel, I could provide a detailed response.
Just to close the loop on this request: importing from PDF files is currently a preview feature in Power BI Desktop. Please try it out and let us know what you think!
Ehren
I've used the new preview feature quite a bit on one project. After a pothole in the December update it is now (Feb 2019 update) working quite effectively. Due to the nature of the data source, it's always going to be more art than science and need a lot of supporting work in your queries, but this is a very good option to look at.
As the new release has made the PDF connector a GA, I was wondering the following:
Is there a function or script that can make extraction from PDF tables values automatic? such as data scraping from HTML websites but for a bluk of PDFs files?
such as;
If I select a folder with PDFs, can it look for tables in all containing the referenced values/words and only download those tables (automatically) ?
I haven't found a function that enables such.
Does anyone have any advice?
As the new release has made the PDF connector a GA, I was wondering the following:
Is there a function or script that can make extraction from PDF tables values automatic? such as data scraping from HTML websites but for a bluk of PDFs files?
such as;
If I select a folder with PDFs, can it look for tables in all containing the referenced values/words and only download those tables (automatically) ?
I haven't found a function that enables such.
Does anyone have any advice?
Jam54 ,
to my knowledge, all tables would be downloaded and then you can filter after their content.
Just create a table with one URL in each row and add a column where you extract all tables first. Then add another column that filters the column with the list of tables (use Table.Contains if you want to search for a word in all columns)
