# The pdftotext Utility

The `pdftotext` command-line utility provides capabilities for converting PDF fils into TXT files for further processing.

References:

* [Documentation](https://www.xpdfreader.com/pdftotext-man.html)
* [Installing on Windows](https://github.com/jalan/pdftotext/issues/16#issuecomment-399963100)
* [Example invocation from a Python script, by @rcy222](https://github.com/rcy222/PDF-Analytics)

## Installation

First see if Git is already installed (it may come pre-installed):

```bash
# Mac Terminal:
pdftotext --help #> pdftotext version 0.65.0 ...
which pdftotext #> /usr/local/bin/pdftotext

# Windows Command Prompt, Anaconda Prompt, or Git Bash:
# first navigate to the folder where you downloaded the "pdftotext.exe" file, then...
pdftotext --help #> pdftotext version 0.65.0 ...
where pdftotext #> /path/to/pdftotext.exe
```

If these commands produce a version-looking output and a filepath-looking output, respectively, then the utility is already installed and you can skip down to the "Usage" section. Otherwise, follow the OS-specific sections below to install it.

### Installation on Mac

Mac users can install `pdftotext` via [homebrew](https://prof-rossetti.gitbook.io/intro-to-python/notes/clis/brew):

```bash
brew install pkg-config poppler
```

After installing, restart your terminal application, where you should now be able to execute `pdftotext` commands (like `pdftotext --version`).

### Installation on Windows

Windows users can install `pdftotext` by visiting <https://www.xpdfreader.com/download.html> and clicking "Download the Xpdf tools". After downloading onto your local computer, locate the zip file and unzip / extract it, then move the unzipped folder to a location like the Desktop or the Programs directory. Inside the unzipped folder, observe the absolute filepath location of the executable file called "bin64/pdftotext.exe". When you need to use the `pdftotext` utility in the future, either reference it from this location (e.g. `/path/to/pdftotext --version`) or add an alias to that location via your "\~/.bash\_profile", or move a copy of that file into any project repository you'd like to reference it from.

## Usage

Download a PDF file onto your Desktop or some other location (e.g. "/path/to/my\_document.pdf"), then navigate there from the command-line. Then process the PDF into a new TXT file (e.g. "/path/to/my\_document.txt"):

```bash
pdftotext /path/to/my_document.pdf /path/to/my_document.txt
```

Then examine the contents of the TXT file in your text editor to see how well it was able to parse the original PDF document:

```bash
code /path/to/my_document.txt
```