topic RE: Updating a PDF document in Product Forum

Updating a PDF document

ctz9843 — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 16:52:00 GMT

I have a use case for opening an existing PDF document, updating a field and then resaving the PDF document. Has something similar been done or does anyone have suggestions on how to accomplish with Blue Prism? Any recommendations on a PDF editor to use?

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Dan Svantner
Application Architect
US Steel
America/New_York
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RE: Updating a PDF document

steven.boggs — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 18:59:00 GMT

Hi Dan,

Our Knowledge Base guide, "How do I work with Adobe Acrobat PDF documents?" contains some best-practice information on how to work with PDF files using Blue Prism. To your specific question, there's a section in this article that discusses using the MS Word VBO to either extract data from or edit/update a PDF before saving it.

I'd also recommend checking out the "Interfacing with PDF Documents" online training guide, which is located in the Blue Prism University (under Training Offering - use the top 'Search' bar to find the relevant course).

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Steve Boggs
Senior Software Support Engineer
Blue Prism
Austin, TX
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RE: Updating a PDF document

ctz9843 — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 16:26:00 GMT

Thanks Steve, this was helpful. I have a question about the MS Word VBO section. It is stating that one method is to convert the PDF to Word, then maniupulate it and export it back to PDF. Is the object to convert a PDF to Work already existing or is that something custom that I would need to develop?

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Dan Svantner
Application Architect
US Steel
America/New_York
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RE: Updating a PDF document

ewilson — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:04:00 GMT

There is a new PDF Toolkit component available on the DX. You can find it here. It includes support for converting a PDF to Word. However, this uses Adobe's Document Cloud platform, so you'll need to check the pre-reqs on having an Adobe DC account or an Adobe developer account to work with it.

Alternatively, there are some free (but limited) services on the net that will convert PDFs to different formats including a Word doc. You could try one of those if this is something you don't expect a digital worker to have to do a lot of. If you do need this quite often, you may have to pay for these services.

One example service:
https://simplypdf.com/

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Partner Integrations for Digital Exchange
Blue Prism
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