Find every number in a PDF?

This Automator Workflow will find any number (including page numbers)

It will convert the PDF to a text file on the Desktop, then use grep to output a report of only the numbers found (the "o" grep option. The line number of where found will be printed the "n" grep option) and will be printed to a file named Report.txt on the Desktop

The Run Shell Script Action is:

textutil -stdout -convert txt "$1" | grep -Eno  '[0-9]{1,}' > Desktop/Report.txt

If you want to see the text on the line with the number use: grep -En

Another approach.

Using Adobe Reader (and I imagine it's true for Acrobat Pro as well):

Next to the Find field, click the dropdown triangle, then select the Open Full Reader (or perhaps Acrobat?) Search option. You'll see a new search window.

In that window, click Use Advanced Search Options. You'll see additional options pop up. Set options as follows:

Look in: The Current Document

What word or phrase . . . ? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Return results containing: Match Any of the words

Click Search to find all the numbers.

mns579 wrote:

Another approach.

A better approach 🙂

(Preview should add this search ability)

Tony T1 wrote:

(Preview should add this search ability)

It already does.

Hit 'command-F' and paste

"1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | "8" | "9" | "0"

Use 'command-G' to cycle through the results.

Nice one! 🙂

Beginners are often unaware of the power of many built-in features in OS X that are automatically inherited by Cocoa apps. Unfortunately, they often think 3rd party apps with blatant but over-complicated UIs are more powerful.

In part, this is due to Apple's unfortunate reluctance to provide "in your face" user documentation (after all, they claim it should all be 'intuitive') that would help you discover these things for yourself; and in part, its due to their most admirable design-choice to keep UIs as minimalist as possible.

You win some, you lose some. 😉

KooKilla wrote:

Wow the automator workflow worked great! Would there be any way that I can organize this stuff now using Excel or Numbers or something else to create a chart? Something that will take anything that has like the number 16 and put it into a 16 category with all other lines that include that number?

Possible, but I need an example of what your output looks like (redact any sensitive data), and an example of how you would like it organized in Excel.

(Also, keep in mind that the line numbers listed in the extracted text probably will not agree to a line number in the original PDF)

Still, would be much better if it Apple could have Preview handle regex

May be better if you could post this as a new question in the OS X Technologies Apple Forum (since AppleScript might me needed to handle this).

It would be helpful if you could then give a few lines of how the data look, and a screenshot of how you would like it to be organized in Excel

If you want to do something like this, you're going to have to plump for a particular application and a particular format, as the specific scripting answer is going to depend on those.

Preview is, alas, not highly scriptable, and the only way you're going to get anywhere close to what you're trying to do with that app is via some dodgy and unpredictable GUI scripting. There used to be (10.6 or so ) a highly "applescriptable" pdf app called 'Skim' that would have made this easier, but I'm not sure what its development status is now. I have no knowledge of scripting Adobe Acrobat, I'm afraid.

Ideally, if possible, you'd extract this data out of pdf into rtf or even better to plain txt format. If that were possible, then sorting your data becomes a fairly standard exercise. It's whether you can either find a scriptable pdf app or get the data into a more manageable format that really determines the next move.

Phil Stokes wrote:

Ideally, if possible, you'd extract this data out of pdf into rtf or even better to plain txt format.

Already done, the OP is working with a plain text file of data ("Report.txt")

I thought we were dealing with pdfs. If you're dealing with plain text, you should be able to advise him of the next move.

Nope, the info the OP needed was extracted to a plain text file with grep in the Automator Workflow I posted.

Already advised OP to ask as a new Topic in OS X Technologies as continuing a new discussion in this topic has become difficult to follow 🙂