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PyPDF2 does not always extract text from pdf file

I am trying to extract text from a PDF file using the python package PyPDF2. Below is the code I wrote for it and it is working just fine for most pdf files. However for this file I get the following error and no text gets extracted whatsoever. Here the warning: PdfReadWarning: Xref table not zero-indexed. ID numbers for objects will be corrected. [pdf.py:1736]
import PyPDF2
# Import and read pdf file
file_name = 'path/to/file.pdf'
pdfFileObj = open(file_name, 'rb')
pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj, strict=True)
# Extract text from pdf file
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(1)
text = pageObj.extractText()
print(text)

Python does not print PDF with pyPDF2

I tried to print pages of a pdf document:
import PyPDF2
FILE_PATH = 'my.pdf'
with open(FILE_PATH, mode='rb') as f:
reader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(f)
page = reader.getPage(0) # I tried also other pages e.g 1,2,..
print(page.extractText())
But I only get a lot of blank space and no error message. Could it be that this pdf version (my.pdf) is not supported by PyPDF2?
This solved it (prints all pages of the document). Thanks
from pdfreader import SimplePDFViewer
fd = open("my.pdf", "rb")
viewer = SimplePDFViewer(fd)
for i in range(1,16): # need range from 1 - max number of pages +1
viewer.navigate(i)
viewer.render()
page_1_content=viewer.canvas.text_content
page_1_text = "".join(viewer.canvas.strings)
print (page_1_text)

Try pdfreader
from pdfreader import SimplePDFViewer
fd = open("my.pdf", "rb")
viewer = SimplePDFViewer(fd)
viewer.render()
page_0_content=viewer.canvas.text_content
page_0_text = "".join(viewer.canvas.strings)

If it's blank, either the PDF is being read and it's format can't be read by pypdf so it just outputs blank. Maybe put in the absolute filepath instead of relative filepath. If all else fails, try with different PDFs , and if there is a version that does work and yours doesn't, you might need to convert yours to that working type.

Merge 2 pdf files giving me an empty pdf

I am using the following standard code:
# importing required modules
import PyPDF2
def PDFmerge(pdfs, output):
# creating pdf file merger object
pdfMerger = PyPDF2.PdfFileMerger()
# appending pdfs one by one
for pdf in pdfs:
with open(pdf, 'rb') as f:
pdfMerger.append(f)
# writing combined pdf to output pdf file
with open(output, 'wb') as f:
pdfMerger.write(f)
def main():
# pdf files to merge
pdfs = ['example.pdf', 'rotated_example.pdf']
# output pdf file name
output = 'combined_example.pdf'
# calling pdf merge function
PDFmerge(pdfs = pdfs, output = output)
if __name__ == "__main__":
# calling the main function
main()
But when I call this with my 2 pdf files (which just contain some text), it produces an empty pdf file, I am wondering how this may be caused?

The problem is that you're closing the files before the write.
When you call pdfMerger.append, it doesn't actually read and process the whole file then; it only does so later, when you call pdfMerger.write. Since the files you've appended are closed, it reads no data from each of them, and therefore outputs an empty PDF.
This should actually raise an exception, which would have made the problem and the fix obvious. Apparently this is a bug introduced in version 1.26, and it will be fixed in the next version. Unfortunately, while the fix was implemented in July 2016, there hasn't been a next version since May 2016. (See this issue.)
You could install directly off the github master (and hope there aren't any new bugs), or you could continue to wait for 1.27, or you could work around the bug. How? Simple: just keep the files open until the write is done:
with contextlib.ExitStack() as stack:
pdfMerger = PyPDF2.PdfFileMerger()
files = [stack.enter_context(open(pdf, 'rb')) for pdf in pdfs]
for f in files:
pdfMerger.append(f)
with open(output, 'wb') as f:
pdfMerger.write(f)

The workaround I have found that works uses an instance of PdfFileReader as the object to append.
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileMerger
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
merger = PdfFileMerger()
for f in ['file1.pdf', 'file2.pdf', 'file3.pdf']:
merger.append(PdfFileReader(f), 'rb')
with open('finished_copy.pdf', 'wb') as new_file:
merger.write(new_file)
Hope that helps!

Convert PDF to .docx with Python

I'm trying very hard to find the way to convert a PDF file to a .docx file with Python.
I have seen other posts related with this, but none of them seem to work correctly in my case.
I'm using specifically
import os
import subprocess
for top, dirs, files in os.walk('/my/pdf/folder'):
for filename in files:
if filename.endswith('.pdf'):
abspath = os.path.join(top, filename)
subprocess.call('lowriter --invisible --convert-to doc "{}"'
.format(abspath), shell=True)
This gives me Output[1], but then, I can't find any .docx document in my folder.
I have LibreOffice 5.3 installed.
Any clues about it?
Thank you in advance!

I am not aware of a way to convert a pdf file into a Word file using libreoffice.
However, you can convert from a pdf to a html and then convert the html to a docx.
Firstly, get the commands running on the command line. (The following is on Linux. So you may have to fill in path names to the soffice binary and use a full path for the input file on your OS)
soffice --convert-to html ./my_pdf_file.pdf
then
soffice --convert-to docx:'MS Word 2007 XML' ./my_pdf_file.html
You should end up with:
my_pdf_file.pdf
my_pdf_file.html
my_pdf_file.docx
Now wrap the commands in your subprocess code

I use this for multiple files
####
from pdf2docx import Converter
import os
# # # dir_path for input reading and output files & a for loop # # #
path_input = '/pdftodocx/input/'
path_output = '/pdftodocx/output/'
for file in os.listdir(path_input):
cv = Converter(path_input+file)
cv.convert(path_output+file+'.docx', start=0, end=None)
cv.close()
print(file)

Below code worked for me.
import win32com.client
word = win32com.client.Dispatch("Word.Application")
word.visible = 1
pdfdoc = 'NewDoc.pdf'
todocx = 'NewDoc.docx'
wb1 = word.Documents.Open(pdfdoc)
wb1.SaveAs(todocx, FileFormat=16) # file format for docx
wb1.Close()
word.Quit()

My approach does not follow the same methodology of using subsystems. However this one does the job of reading through all the pages of a PDF document and moving them to a docx file. Note: It only works with text; images and other objects are usually ignored.
#Description: This python script will allow you to fetch text information from a pdf file
#import libraries
import PyPDF2
import os
import docx
mydoc = docx.Document() # document type
pdfFileObj = open('pdf/filename.pdf', 'rb') # pdffile loction
pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj) # define pdf reader object
# Loop through all the pages
for pageNum in range(1, pdfReader.numPages):
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(pageNum)
pdfContent = pageObj.extractText() #extracts the content from the page.
print(pdfContent) # print statement to test output in the terminal. codeline optional.
mydoc.add_paragraph(pdfContent) # this adds the content to the word document
mydoc.save("pdf/filename.docx") # Give a name to your output file.

I have successfully done this with pdf2docx :
from pdf2docx import parse
pdf_file = "test.pdf"
word_file = "test.docx"
parse(pdf_file, word_file, start=0, end=None)

python pdf (PyPDF2 module) - How to split/merge this?

I was trying to split & merge pdf files so that i can remove the first page of each pdf files.. Here's the code.
#python3
#split and merge pdf files!
import os, PyPDF2
pdfFiles = []
os.chdir('C:\\Users\\Cyber\\Downloads\\5-111-fall-2008\\5-111-fall-2008\\contents\\readings-and-lecture-notes')
for filename in os.listdir('.'):
if filename.endswith('pdf'):
pdfFiles.append(filename)
pdfWriter = PyPDF2.PdfFileWriter()
for filename in pdfFiles:
pdfFileObj = open(filename, 'rb')
pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
for pageNum in range(1, pdfReader.numPages):
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(pageNum)
pdfWriter.addPage(pageObj)
pdfOutput = open('Merged.pdf', 'wb')
pdfWriter.write(pdfOutput)
pdfOutput.close()
And then i get the following error...
: PdfReadWarning: Xref table not zero-indexed. ID numbers for objects will be corrected. [pdf.py:1736]
I searched for that error and found out that it indicates there may have been an issue with the creation of the PDF itself.
Though i get my merged.pdf file as i wanted, i want to know what that exactly means & how to avoid getting them.

This warning means that the first section of the xref table does not begin with object zero. There may have been an error in writing the PDF. If strict = False, PyPDF2 will try to correct the object ID numbers. If strict = True, they will not be corrected.The default is True. Try PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj,False)