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Jbuzios's avatar
Jbuzios
New Member
1 year ago
Solved

How to Import PDF in Single Column

Good morning, How do I import a PDF without dividing it into columns? Att. Julio
Tutorial Requests
  • MarkLaf's avatar
    MarkLaf
    1 year ago

    The only built-in connector is Pdf.Tables, and I do not believe there is any way to prevent it from parsing the PDF content into a table of tables of page text and tables (charts, etc.). You may want to look into using Power Query R or Python.

     

    That said, here is a general set of PQ transformations you can use to convert the default Pdf.Tables parsing into a something similar to Lines.FromBinary, which I think is what you are asking for.

     

    let
    // Load the PDF file a location
    // Note: Use File.Contents for local files
    Source = Web.Contents(
        "https://file-examples.com/storage/feeed4f6296807c3196e058/2017/10/file-example_PDF_1MB.pdf"
    ),
    // Parse the PDF file to extract its content
    PdfParse = Pdf.Tables(Source),
    // Filter the parsed content to get only the pages
    GetPagesOnly = Table.SelectRows(PdfParse, each ([Kind] = "Page")),
    // Combine all the separate tables of page content into one table for the whole file
    CombineAllPageContent = Table.Combine(GetPagesOnly[Data]),
    // Merge all columns into a single column (called "Merged")
    MergeAllPageColumns = Table.CombineColumns(
        CombineAllPageContent,
        Table.ColumnNames(CombineAllPageContent),
        Combiner.CombineTextByDelimiter("", QuoteStyle.None),
        "Merged"
    )
in
    MergeAllPageColumns

     

    Quick visual of the steps to see what the above is doing:

     

rohit1991's avatar
rohit1991
Super User
1 year ago

Hi Jbuzios 

 

When you import a PDF in Power BI, the connector automatically tries to detect tables and split them into columns. If you want the entire page or table content as a single column, you can do this:

  1. In the Navigator window (after selecting your PDF), choose the page instead of the detected table this keeps the raw layout.
  2. In Power Query, select all the columns >>Transform >> Merge Columns into one (choose a separator like space or line break).
  3. Optionally, use Keep Only One Column if you want just that merged result.

If the PDF layout makes it hard to merge properly, you can also import it as plain text (using a PDF-to-text converter first) and then load that into Power BI as a single column.