📃
Extract Text from PDF Files in
VB.NET (With Source Code)
🔍 Overview
Extracting text from PDF files in a VB.NET WinForms application is a powerful feature, especially for building document management systems, search tools, or data mining utilities. In this guide, we walk you through a complete example of how to extract PDF content using VB.NET with the help of the free and open-source library PdfPig.
🎯 Why Text Extraction from PDFs?
PDFs are ubiquitous in business and research. Being able to extract text allows you to:
- Automate Data entry
- Build searchable archives
- Parse and analyze documents programmatically
⚙️ Prerequisites
Before you start, make sure you have:
- Visual Studio (VS....VS2022)
- Target framework: .NET Framework 4.6.1 or later
- Form1.vb (Button, TextBox), Save your Visual Basic Solution.
- Install
PdfPigvia NuGet:Install-Package UglyToad.PdfPig
🧪 Example: Extract Text from PDF in VB.NET
Here's a complete example demonstrating how to use PdfPig to read all text from a PDF file:
Imports UglyToad.PdfPig
Imports UglyToad.PdfPig.Content
Imports System.IO
Public Class Form1
Private Function ExtractPdfText(pdfPath As String) As String
Dim sb As New Text.StringBuilder()
Using document = PdfDocument.Open(pdfPath)
For Each page As Page In document.GetPages()
sb.AppendLine(page.Text)
Next
End Using
Return sb.ToString()
End Function
Private Sub BtnLoad_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles BtnLoad.Click
Dim ofd As New OpenFileDialog With {.Filter = "PDF files (*.pdf)|*.pdf", .Title = "Select a PDF file"}
If ofd.ShowDialog() = DialogResult.OK Then
TxtOutput.Text = ExtractPdfText(ofd.FileName)
End If
End Sub
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
End Sub
End Class
🧾 Explanation
- OpenFileDialog – lets user select a PDF file.
- PdfDocument.Open – opens the file for reading.
- page.Text – extracts all text content from each page.
- StringBuilder – accumulates the text for display.
📦 UI Elements Required
Design your Form with the following:
- Button (Name:
BtnLoad, Text: "Load PDF") - TextBox (Name:
TxtOutput, Multiline: True, ScrollBars: Both, Dock: Fill)
💡 Pro Tips
- Make sure to handle empty pages or encrypted PDFs using try-catch.
- Use
.Replace()or Regex if you need to clean or filter text.
🚀 Real-World Use Cases
- OCR applications (use this with Tesseract)
- Legal document indexing
- Academic paper analysis
🛡️ Final Notes
PdfPig is a .NET-friendly, pure C# library without native dependencies, making deployment easy. It doesn’t support images or layout positioning but is perfect for text-based PDFs.
👨🏫 Similar project using iTextSharp
♥ Here are some online Visual Basic lessons and courses:
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