bulk conversion of PDF files?

[john_kesich]

I have 231,353 cast vote record PDF files. Short of manually opening each file in Acrobat and exporting it, is there a way to convert these files to text or CSV, either as individual files or as one large file? Or is there an API I can use to access the data from the PDF files? Would prefer using perl.

Thank you.

[Moved from the non-technical Lounge to an Acrobat forum... Mod]

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[try67]

That's way too much for Acrobat to be able to handle in a single process.

I don't know about Perl, but I've developed tools in Java that can process large amounts of files in this way.

If you're interested in purchasing such a tool feel free to contact me privately via try6767 at gmail.com .

[Erik Lord]

You can try to setup a 'watch' folder. I did this many years ago for a similar need, but not nearly as many documents.

I'm not positive this will still work, but worth a search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=acrobat+watch+folder

[try67]

Acrobat doesn't support watched folders of any kind. Distiller does, though.

[john_kesich]

The Distiller documentation only mentions converting Postscript to PDF. Since the files I have are PDF, I don't see how Distiller would help...

[Erik Lord]

Ah, your right, sorry. I must have been processing PS files. It was a long time ago...and didn't address your question about converting to a different format.

how about these thread?

How Do I Convert Multiple PDF to Word Documents?

batch convert pdf to txt using OCR with Adobe Acrobat Pro

[john_kesich · Accepted solution]

Looks like

codeproject.com/Articles/7056/Code-to-extract-plain-text-from-a-PDF-file

will get me on my way. I suspect some assembly will be required.