Winnovative PDF to Text Converter can be used in any type of .NET application to extract the text from a PDF document and to search text in PDF documents. The integration with existing .NET applications is extremely easy and no installation is necessary in order to run the converter. The downloaded archive contains the assembly for .NET and demo applications for text extraction and text search. The result of conversion is a .NET String object that you can further manipulate.

Features

Extract text from PDF documents
Search text in PDF documents
Save the extracted text using various text encodings
Case sensitive and whole word options for text search
Support for password protected PDF documents
Extract the text or search only a range of PDF pages
Extract text preserving the original PDF layout
Extract text in PDF reading order or PDF internal order
Get the number of pages in a PDF document
Get the PDF document title, keywords, author and description
Does not require Adobe Reader or other third party tools
Support for .NET 4.0 framework and later
Documentation and C# samples for all the features

Code Sample for PDF to Text Conversion
The code below was taken from the PDF to Text demo application available for download in the PDF to Text Converter archive. In this example an instance of the PdfToTextConverter class is constructed and used to extract the text from a PDF document into a .NET String object. The resulted text is saved in a file on disk using the UTF-8 encoding.

private void btnConvertToText_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (pdfFileTextBox.Text.Trim().Equals(String.Empty))
    {
        MessageBox.Show("Please choose a PDF file to convert", "Choose PDF file", MessageBoxButtons.OK);
        return;
    }

    // the pdf file to convert
    string pdfFileName = pdfFileTextBox.Text.Trim();
            
    // start page number
    int startPageNumber = int.Parse(textBoxStartPage.Text.Trim());
    // end page number
    // when it is 0 the extraction will continue up to the end of document
    int endPageNumber = 0;
    if (textBoxEndPage.Text.Trim() != String.Empty)
        endPageNumber = int.Parse(textBoxEndPage.Text.Trim());

    // the output text layout
    TextLayout textLayout = SelectedTextLayout();

    // the output text encoding
    System.Text.Encoding textEncoding = SelectedTextEncoding();

    // page breaks
    bool markPageBreaks = cbMarkPageBreaks.Checked;

    string outputFileName = System.IO.Path.Combine(Application.StartupPath, @"DemoFiles\Output", 
            System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(pdfFileName) + ".txt");

    // create the converter object and set the user options
    PdfToTextConverter pdfToTextConverter = new PdfToTextConverter();

    pdfToTextConverter.LicenseKey = "C4WUhJaRhJSEkoqUhJeVipWWip2dnZ2ElA==";

    pdfToTextConverter.Layout = textLayout;
    pdfToTextConverter.MarkPageBreaks = markPageBreaks;

    Cursor = Cursors.WaitCursor;
    try
    {
        // extract text from PDF
        string extractedText = pdfToTextConverter.ConvertToText(pdfFileName, startPageNumber, endPageNumber);

        // write the resulted string into an output file 
        // in the application directory using the selected encoding
        System.IO.File.WriteAllText(outputFileName, extractedText, textEncoding);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(String.Format("An error occurred. {0}", ex.Message), "Error");
        return;
    }
    finally
    {
        Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
    }


    try
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(outputFileName);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
        return;
    }
}

Code Sample for Text Search in PDF
The code below was taken from the Find Text demo application available for download in the PDF to Text Converter archive. In this example an instance of the PdfToTextConverter class is constructed and used to search a given text in a PDF document and highlight that text in PDF document.

private void btnFindText_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (pdfFileTextBox.Text.Trim().Equals(String.Empty))
    {
        MessageBox.Show("Please choose a PDF file to search", "Choose PDF file", MessageBoxButtons.OK);
        return;
    }

    if (textToFindTextBox.Text.Trim().Equals(String.Empty))
    {
        MessageBox.Show("Please enter the text to find", "Text to Find", MessageBoxButtons.OK);
        return;
    }

    // the pdf file to search 
    string pdfFileName = pdfFileTextBox.Text.Trim();

    // start page number
    int startPageNumber = int.Parse(textBoxStartPage.Text.Trim());
    // end page number
    // when it is 0 the extraction will continue up to the end of document
    int endPageNumber = 0;
    if (textBoxEndPage.Text.Trim() != String.Empty)
        endPageNumber = int.Parse(textBoxEndPage.Text.Trim());

    Cursor = Cursors.WaitCursor;
    string outputFileName = System.IO.Path.Combine(Application.StartupPath, @"DemoFiles\Output",
            System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(pdfFileName) + "_Highlighted.pdf");
    Document pdfDocument = null;
    try
    {
        // create the PDF to Text converter
        PdfToTextConverter pdfToTextConverter = new PdfToTextConverter();

        pdfToTextConverter.LicenseKey = "C4WUhJaRhJSEkoqUhJeVipWWip2dnZ2ElA==";

        // search text in PDF
        FindTextLocation[] findTextLocations = pdfToTextConverter.FindText(pdfFileName, textToFindTextBox.Text,
                    startPageNumber, endPageNumber, cbCaseSensitive.Checked, cbWholeWord.Checked);

        // open the PDF to search in PDF library
        pdfDocument = new Document(pdfFileName);

        // highlight the found text in PDF
        foreach (FindTextLocation findTextLocation in findTextLocations)
        {
            RectangleElement highlightRectangle = new RectangleElement(findTextLocation.X, findTextLocation.Y,
                findTextLocation.Width, findTextLocation.Height);
            highlightRectangle.BackColor = Color.Yellow;
            highlightRectangle.Opacity = 50;

            pdfDocument.Pages[findTextLocation.PageNumber - 1].AddElement(highlightRectangle);
        }

        // Save the modified PDF document in a memory buffer
        byte[] outPdfBuffer = pdfDocument.Save();

        // Write the memory buffer in a PDF file
        System.IO.File.WriteAllBytes(outputFileName, outPdfBuffer);
    }

    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        // The search failed
        MessageBox.Show(String.Format("An error occurred. {0}", ex.Message), "Error");
        return;
    }
    finally
    {
        // Close the PDF document
        if (pdfDocument != null)
            pdfDocument.Close();

        Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
    }

    // Open the modified PDF document in default PDF viewer
    try
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(outputFileName);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(String.Format("Cannot open highlighted PDF file '{0}'. {1}", outputFileName, ex.Message));
    }
}

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