PDF to Excel code (free text writting) with loop

[MarkCBB]

Hi there VBA Pros,

Ok, this is a shot in the dark, but I figured that I might as well ask this question on the Forum.

I am going to be receiving about 4000 scanned PDF forms that all have the same layout but with free hand writing in the answer blocks of the form. Agents in the field are approaching the public and completing questionnaires. The form its self is very basic and contains 6 numeric entires and 2 text entries (the free hand writing).

My question is, if all the scanned PDF files where is a folder on my laptop, is it possible to create some VBA code that would open each file and extract the information from the PDF file and paste the data into the Excel file (maybe on a landing page of sorts for cleaning, and then run some code to clean the data(I should be able to do this part)

The only thing I have going for myself on this is that I can create the form that is going to be completed by hand, (my idea is as big as possible with an ID's for each field that is completed by hand.

I have seen that there are some download-able programs that can convert PDF to excel, but they dont really deal well with free text writing. and I have no idea how to make that programm (if it could read the free hand writing), to then run in a VBA loop.


Like I said, this is a shot in the dark, but I figured I might as well ask before I hire a few data captures.

 

[Derek Brown]

I don't have the answer but it may be worth looking at:

Able2Extract: http://www.investintech.com/
and
Nitro: http://www.nitropdf.com/
You may need to first use some OCR process to produce an 'intermediate' conversion.
Perhaps contacting their sales department with the question ........