How do you collect text data from filled forms in local PDF files?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
October 5, 2020
2 replies
2647 views

I have about 80 local PDF files having input forms that have been filled by students. I would like to extract text data from them so that I can easily score their answers. How do you do that by the latest Acrobat Pro? I need do that on local files.

PDF forms

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Correct answer try67

You didn't mention your version of Acrobat but it can be done using the Merge Data Files into Spreadsheet command, which is under Tools - Prepare Form (and then under More Form Options, in some versions).

try67

Correct answer

Community Expert

You didn't mention your version of Acrobat but it can be done using the Merge Data Files into Spreadsheet command, which is under Tools - Prepare Form (and then under More Form Options, in some versions).

O

oxoxonAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you very much. It is what I was looking for and it worked, but all the Japanese characters in the form fields are broken after exporting to a CSV file.

try67

Community Expert

Thank you agai. The text encoding looks to be UTF-8 because I could etract fields text by using PyPDF2, which is a Python module to handle PDF forms. For the moment, the use of PyPDF2 is good enough for my purpose, but your suggestion to use the native Acrobat functionality was much easier except for the Japanese character problem.

If I find a fix for my problem, I will post it in this thread for someone else.

Can you share a sample file with fields that has Japanese text in them?

Amal.

Community Manager

Hi there,

We are sorry for the trouble. As described, you want to extract data from the filled PDF form.

Please try the following steps and see if that helps

In Acrobat, open the response file and select the data to export.
In the left navigation panel, click Export, and then choose Export Selected.
In the Select Folder To Save File dialog box, specify a name, location, and file format (CSV or XML) for the form data, and click Save.

For more information please look at the help page https://helpx.adobe.com/in/acrobat/using/collecting-pdf-form-data.html#export_user_data_from_a_response_file

Regards

Amal

O

oxoxonAuthor

Participating Frequently

The PDF files were collected via a web form as a file attachment, and so the individual users have not submitted the form. In this case, how do I create and initializethe response file you mentioned? Thank you very much for your help.

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