How do I convert a PDF to a text file and preserve the format of the PDF?

Question

Hello I want to convert a PDF file to text file. I am converting the PDF file to text file. But it doesn't preserves the format of text which is exactly in PDF file.

Please help me.

Answer 1

A text file by itself cannot contain formatting.

You cannot preserve formatting in a plain text file because it only contains text. There could be HTML markup inside the text file, but then I would call this an HTML file. Otherwise, you should be trying to convert it into a rich text format (RTF), Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, or some other document type instead.

Answer 2

This can help you.

File f = new File(fileName);
        if (!f.isFile()) {  
            return null;  
        } 


        try {
            parser = new PDFParser(new FileInputStream(f));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return null;
        }  

        try {
            parser.parse();
            cosDoc = parser.getDocument();  
            pdfStripper = new PDFTextStripper();
           /* pdfStripper.setStartPage(2); 
            pdfStripper.setEndPage(3);*/  
            pdDoc = new PDDocument(cosDoc);
            parsedText = pdfStripper.getText(pdDoc);
        } catch (Exception e) {  
            System.out.println("An exception occured in parsing the PDF Document.");  
            e.printStackTrace();  
            try {  
                   if (cosDoc != null) cosDoc.close();  
                   if (pdDoc != null) pdDoc.close();  
               } catch (Exception e1) {  
               e.printStackTrace();  
            }  
            return null;  
        }

Answer 3

PDFBox will help you for this it may loose some formatting as Erick Robertson said

refer PDF Text Parser: Converting PDF to Text in Java using PDFBox