Extracting Structured Tables from PDFs

Extracting structured tables from PDF documents can be a challenging task, especially for non-image files. Here's a comprehensive guide to help you tackle this issue:

Non-OCR Solutions

The PDF -> HTML -> Extract Table route can be unreliable, especially with documents containing non-English fonts. Here are some alternatives:

1. Manual Extraction

Use software like Adobe Acrobat or Foxit to manually select table cells and copy them into a spreadsheet. This works well for small tables with simple structures.

2. PDF to XML Converters

Tools like PDFBox can extract table data into XML format, which can be further processed to extract structured data.

3. Custom Pattern Matching

If the PDF is generated consistently, you can develop custom patterns to identify table cells and extract their contents. However, this requires a deep understanding of PDF structures.

Limitations of the Provided PDF

The specific PDF you mentioned has two significant challenges:

• Missing Table Data: The PDF does not include explicit table data, making it difficult to extract structured information without human interpretation.
• Encoding Issue: The PDF uses fonts that falsely claim to use WinAnsiEncoding, which leads to corrupted text extraction.

Recommendation

Given these limitations, it may be impossible to extract structured tables from the provided PDF without OCR techniques. Instead, you may consider alternative methods, such as requesting the original table data from the document creator or pursuing other OCR solutions.