PDF Skill Reference

Overview

The PDF skill provides comprehensive PDF processing capabilities including reading and extracting text/tables, combining or splitting PDFs, rotating pages, adding watermarks, creating new PDFs from scratch, filling forms, encrypting/decrypting, extracting images, and performing OCR on scanned documents.

Use this skill for any task involving PDF files - reading, creating, modifying, or converting. For advanced features and detailed examples, consult the skill’s REFERENCE.md file. For PDF form filling, see FORMS.md.

Quick Start

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# Read a PDF
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
print(f"Pages: {len(reader.pages)}")

# Extract text
text = ""
for page in reader.pages:
    text += page.extract_text()

Python Libraries

pypdf - Basic Operations

Merge PDFs

from pypdf import PdfWriter, PdfReader

writer = PdfWriter()
for pdf_file in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf", "doc3.pdf"]:
    reader = PdfReader(pdf_file)
    for page in reader.pages:
        writer.add_page(page)

with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Split PDF

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
    writer = PdfWriter()
    writer.add_page(page)
    with open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb") as output:
        writer.write(output)

Extract Metadata

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
meta = reader.metadata
print(f"Title: {meta.title}")
print(f"Author: {meta.author}")
print(f"Subject: {meta.subject}")
print(f"Creator: {meta.creator}")

Rotate Pages

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

page = reader.pages[0]
page.rotate(90)  # Rotate 90 degrees clockwise
writer.add_page(page)

with open("rotated.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction

Extract Text with Layout

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for page in pdf.pages:
        text = page.extract_text()
        print(text)

Extract Tables

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for i, page in enumerate(pdf.pages):
        tables = page.extract_tables()
        for j, table in enumerate(tables):
            print(f"Table {j+1} on page {i+1}:")
            for row in table:
                print(row)

Advanced Table Extraction to Excel

import pandas as pd

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    all_tables = []
    for page in pdf.pages:
        tables = page.extract_tables()
        for table in tables:
            if table:  # Check if table is not empty
                df = pd.DataFrame(table[1:], columns=table[0])
                all_tables.append(df)

# Combine all tables
if all_tables:
    combined_df = pd.concat(all_tables, ignore_index=True)
    combined_df.to_excel("extracted_tables.xlsx", index=False)

reportlab - Create PDFs

Basic PDF Creation

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas

c = canvas.Canvas("hello.pdf", pagesize=letter)
width, height = letter

# Add text
c.drawString(100, height - 100, "Hello World!")
c.drawString(100, height - 120, "This is a PDF created with reportlab")

# Add a line
c.line(100, height - 140, 400, height - 140)

# Save
c.save()

Create Multi-Page PDF

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer, PageBreak
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = []

# Add content
title = Paragraph("Report Title", styles['Title'])
story.append(title)
story.append(Spacer(1, 12))

body = Paragraph("This is the body of the report. " * 20, styles['Normal'])
story.append(body)
story.append(PageBreak())

# Page 2
story.append(Paragraph("Page 2", styles['Heading1']))
story.append(Paragraph("Content for page 2", styles['Normal']))

# Build PDF
doc.build(story)

Subscripts and Superscripts

IMPORTANT: Never use Unicode subscript/superscript characters (₀₁₂₃, ⁰¹²³) in ReportLab PDFs. Built-in fonts don’t include these glyphs, causing them to render as solid black boxes.

Instead, use ReportLab’s XML markup tags in Paragraph objects:

from reportlab.platypus import Paragraph
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

styles = getSampleStyleSheet()

# Subscripts: use <sub> tag
chemical = Paragraph("H<sub>2</sub>O", styles['Normal'])

# Superscripts: use <super> tag
squared = Paragraph("x<super>2</super> + y<super>2</super>", styles['Normal'])

For canvas-drawn text (not Paragraph objects), manually adjust font size and position.

Command-Line Tools

pdftotext (poppler-utils)

# Extract text
pdftotext input.pdf output.txt

# Extract text preserving layout
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt

# Extract specific pages
pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 input.pdf output.txt  # Pages 1-5

qpdf

QPDF Commands

# Merge PDFs
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf

# Split pages
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 6-10 -- pages6-10.pdf

# Rotate pages
qpdf input.pdf output.pdf --rotate=+90:1  # Rotate page 1 by 90 degrees

# Remove password
qpdf --password=mypassword --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf

pdftk (if available)

# Merge
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf

# Split
pdftk input.pdf burst

# Rotate
pdftk input.pdf rotate 1east output rotated.pdf

Common Tasks

Extract Text from Scanned PDFs (OCR)

OCR with Tesseract

Requires: pip install pytesseract pdf2image

import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

# Convert PDF to images
images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf')

# OCR each page
text = ""
for i, image in enumerate(images):
    text += f"Page {i+1}:\n"
    text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
    text += "\n\n"

print(text)

Add Watermark

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# Create watermark (or load existing)
watermark = PdfReader("watermark.pdf").pages[0]

# Apply to all pages
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

for page in reader.pages:
    page.merge_page(watermark)
    writer.add_page(page)

with open("watermarked.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Extract Images

# Using pdfimages (poppler-utils)
pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix

# This extracts all images as:
# output_prefix-000.jpg, output_prefix-001.jpg, etc.

Password Protection

Encrypt PDF

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

for page in reader.pages:
    writer.add_page(page)

# Add password
writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword")

with open("encrypted.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Quick Reference Table

Task	Best Tool	Command/Code
Merge PDFs	pypdf	`writer.add_page(page)`
Split PDFs	pypdf	One page per file
Extract text	pdfplumber	`page.extract_text()`
Extract tables	pdfplumber	`page.extract_tables()`
Create PDFs	reportlab	Canvas or Platypus
Command line merge	qpdf	`qpdf --empty --pages ...`
OCR scanned PDFs	pytesseract	Convert to image first
Fill PDF forms	pdf-lib or pypdf	See FORMS.md

Best Practices

Library Selection Guide:

pypdf: Basic operations (merge, split, rotate, encrypt)
pdfplumber: Text and table extraction with layout preservation
reportlab: Creating new PDFs from scratch
pytesseract: OCR for scanned documents

Common Pitfalls:

Avoid Unicode subscripts/superscripts in ReportLab (use XML tags)
Always validate PDF output after creation
Test OCR accuracy on sample pages before processing large documents
Remember that text extraction quality depends on PDF source (native vs scanned)

Next Steps

For advanced pypdfium2 usage, see REFERENCE.md
For JavaScript libraries (pdf-lib), see REFERENCE.md
For PDF form filling instructions, follow FORMS.md
For troubleshooting guides, see REFERENCE.md

Document Skills

Creative & Design

Development & Technical

Enterprise & Communication

Overview

Quick Start

Python Libraries

pypdf - Basic Operations

pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction

reportlab - Create PDFs

Command-Line Tools

pdftotext (poppler-utils)

qpdf

pdftk (if available)

Common Tasks

Extract Text from Scanned PDFs (OCR)

Add Watermark

Extract Images

Password Protection

Quick Reference Table

Best Practices

Next Steps

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Document Skills

Creative & Design

Development & Technical

Enterprise & Communication

​Overview

​Quick Start

​Python Libraries

​pypdf - Basic Operations

​pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction

​reportlab - Create PDFs

​Command-Line Tools

​pdftotext (poppler-utils)

​qpdf

​pdftk (if available)

​Common Tasks

​Extract Text from Scanned PDFs (OCR)

​Add Watermark

​Extract Images

​Password Protection

​Quick Reference Table

​Best Practices

​Next Steps

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Overview

Quick Start

Python Libraries

pypdf - Basic Operations

pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction

reportlab - Create PDFs

Command-Line Tools

pdftotext (poppler-utils)

qpdf

pdftk (if available)

Common Tasks

Extract Text from Scanned PDFs (OCR)

Add Watermark

Extract Images

Password Protection

Quick Reference Table

Best Practices

Next Steps