Get Data Query: PDF Issue

Power Query
1

Any suggestions on PDF data that PQ won’t read? I have a few PDF doc’s from which I need to get data. PQ says the page is “blank”.

Any way to fix this?

2

Hi @bgillaspey1,

Is your PDF an image or does it contain selectable text?
If an image you’ll need OCR otherwise can you provide a sample?

3

Thanks, Melissa for your quick reply. I’m attempting get an answer to your question.

Weird things are going on, though. This and the one or two other PDF’s where I have problems all come from one source–an enterprise software package for churches (it’s financials: I’d have to sanitize any screen shot before I could send it; and I’m still learning my way around this forum…). But more important: most of the other reports “printed” to a PDF work fine.

I have some “experiments” I need to do, and of course, I need to check with the IT folks at “headquarters”.

Again: thanks.

4

It’s great to know that you are making progress with your query @bgillaspey1 .

Please don’t forget if your question has been answered within the forum it is important to mark your thread as ‘solved’.

We request you to kindly take time to answer the Enterprise DNA Forum User Experience Survey,We hope you’ll give your insights on how we can further improve the Support forum. Thanks!

5

Hi @bgillaspey1, a gentle follow up on the information/sample @Melissa provided above.

6

Hi @bgillaspey1, due to inactivity, a response on this post has been tagged as “Solution”. If you have a follow question or concern related to this topic, please remove the Solution tag first by clicking the three dots beside Reply and then untick the check box.

7

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you. No solution yet. Has anyone else ever encountered PDF’s from which data cannot be extracted…? Just curious.

I tried my experiments/checks ( I checked some other PDF’s from the same enterprise accounting system): so a limited number of PDFs from this source are routinely “blank”; others are just fine. I have reached out to the their IT department. This may take some time.

8

Just to document:

Never found any solution.

The IT staff at “corporate” appear to have changed some things (not necessarily due to my issues); coincidental to those changes, all the PDF reports that used to be “empty” now work.