Summary

Learn about the properties of PDF documents and understand the areas of difficulty when exporting files of this type.

Resolution

No, MindBridge cannot analyze PDF documents in the majority of cases.

When extracting data from ERPs, look for menu options like "Save as" or "Export" and select a common file format, such as .xlsx, .csv, .dbf, or delimited.

Alternatively, you can use any database format (SQL, MySQL, AccessDB) or structured format (XML, GDPdU, XAF, XBRL).

Root cause

PDFs were originally designed as a way to present documents, often for printing and displaying information in a human-readable format. As a result, the data in a PDF document is often not in a format that can be read by a machine.

Even if it fits neatly into a table of rows and columns, there is no guarantee that the underlying data can be read by a machine.

There are many conversion tools and libraries available, however, depending on the data set the conversion process could result in issues, including missing characters or words, have misaligned columns, etc.

Anything else on your mind? Chat with us or submit a request for further assistance.