>>>>>>>>Hi,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>I want to automate the loading of information contained in a PDF document to a database. Any easy ways to do this?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Best Regards,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>J Miller
>>>>>>>This will give an access to document's fields collection:
>>>>>>>AcroExchAVDoc = CreateObject("AcroExch.AVDoc")
>>>>>>>AcroExchAVDoc.Open("pdfform.pdf", "")
>>>>>>>AFormAut = CreateObject("AFormAut.App")
>>>>>>>Fields = AFormAut.Fields
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>You need a full version of Acrobat or Acrobat Business Tools.
>>>>>>>Mark
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Hi Mark,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I finally purchased version 4 of Acrobat. I've been perusing the documentation along with any docs I found on the Adobe site to give me better insight as to what I wanted to do with the PDFs.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I downloaded and installed the Acrobat SDK. Is this a necessity to do what I describe above? Can you point me in the right direction as far as the documentation I need to read to continue on with the code segment that you shared above?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Any help would be appreciated.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>John
>>>>>
>>>>>To do what you want with fields no SDK is needed. Acrobat SDK does not offer much more then you already have with a full version of the product. SDK in mainly for C++ developers who are developing Add-ons for Acrobat. In fact, Automation between VB (VFP) and Acrobat is limited comparing to what you can do using SDK (and C++). Remember, you cannot run Acrobat on the Web server to modify PDFs to send them out to client's browser.
>>>>>HTH,
>>>>>Mark
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Hi Mark,
>>>>
>>>>I went through just about all the Acrobat docs I could find on the Adobe site looking for a way to access the fields collection of a PDF. The code segment you gave me (which I tested and works great) stops short of how to actually start getting the data out of a PDF. Any further direction you could give me?
>>>>
>>>>Best Regards,
>>>>
>>>>John
>>>
>>>
>>>To access existing fields you need to know their names:
>>>?fields.Item('test').value
>>>?fields.Item('test').type
>>>
>>>Mark
>>
>>
>>Mark,
>>
>>That's the problem - I don't know their names. There are two PDF documents that I have created by another source. It contains information that I want to dig out and put into a database. If I don't know their names, is there a way to programmatically get them?
>>
>>Thanks for all your help. You've saved me much time so far.
>>
>>John
>
>
>You can create a new pushbutton in the document you need to get fields from and add this LS code to mouse down actions:
>
>console.clear();
>// Loop through collection of fields
>for (var i = 0; i < numFields; i++)
>{ var f_name = getNthFieldName(i);
>var f = getField(f_name);
>console.println("Field " + (i + 1) + ": " + f_name + " - " + f.type);
>}
>console.show();
>
>then copy and paste fields names. Still not a true Automation :((. Will let you know if I find anything else.
>Mark
>PS. No credits to me for a trick.


Mark:

Perfect! I owe you one!

Thanks,

John