Get page count info from documents via command lines SOLVED

[lebaotrung]

Hi,
I am using PDF-Tools command lines to execute some pdf operation within VBA in excel. One of the task is to write the pdf document's page count to excel.
The solution I am using is to parse the pdf as binary and look using RegExp to look for "/Type /Page" to count the total number of pages inside. This work like most of the time.
However for some documents, especially those that are produced by merging multiple pdf(s) with PDF-Xchange merge, this counting method does not work (return count 0).

Is there any way via PDF-Tools command line that can return back the page count info of a pdf document so that VBA can read? Like write them inside a text file or something.

Thanks!

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello lebaotrung,

Welcome to our forums!

You can run JS via PDF Tools, and something simple as "this.numPages;" should get you the desired value. I am not 100% sure though how you can take that value back to your VBA for further processing.

Working with JS via PDF-Tools is explained here:
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxt10/in ... pt_t2.html

Kind regards,
Stefan

[KunjanSoni]

Hi lebaotrung,

Here is VBA code which provides page count of a PDF file.

Sub PDFpageCount()

Dim Inst As PDFXEdit.PXV_Inst
Dim PXC As PDFXEdit.PXC_Inst
Dim cDoc As PDFXEdit.IPXC_Document
Dim Path As String

Path = "C:\xxxx\test.pdf"


Set Inst = New PDFXEdit.PXV_Inst
Inst.Init

Set PXC = Inst.GetExtension("PXC")
PXC.Init ""

Set cDoc = PXC.OpenDocumentFromFile(Path, Nothing)
MsgBox cDoc.Pages.Count


End Sub

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

[Nimrod_189]

In VBA I always use PDFtk. This allows you to make various edits or obtain information about PDF.

The call batch-command would then be:

Code: Select all

E:\Programmtools\PDFtk Server\bin\pdftk MyPDF.pdf dump_data output PageCount.txt

The result is a txt file that can easily be read with the following command:

Code: Select all

iFile = FreeFile
Open TmpFolder & "PageCount.txt" For Input As #iFile
Do While Not EOF(iFile)
Line Input #iFile, str
If InStrRev(str, "NumberOfPages", , vbTextCompare) <> 0 Then
Pagecount = Val(Right(str, Len(str) - Len("NumberOfPages: ")))
Exit Thu
End If
                          
loops

Close #iFile
Kill TmpFolder & "PageCount.txt"

Download PDFkt: [url]https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit[/url]

Nimrod

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

[lebaotrung]

Hi lebaotrung,

Here is VBA code which provides page count of a PDF file.

Sub PDFpageCount()

Dim Inst As PDFXEdit.PXV_Inst
Dim PXC As PDFXEdit.PXC_Inst
Dim cDoc As PDFXEdit.IPXC_Document
Dim Path As String

Path = "C:\xxxx\test.pdf"


Set Inst = New PDFXEdit.PXV_Inst
Inst.Init

Set PXC = Inst.GetExtension("PXC")
PXC.Init ""

Set cDoc = PXC.OpenDocumentFromFile(Path, Nothing)
MsgBox cDoc.Pages.Count


End Sub

Thanks KunjanSoni for the answer. This seems to be like the type of solution i am looking for. But seems like this required the SDK. I was told before that the SDK is not available product anymore?

[lebaotrung]

Hello lebaotrung,

Welcome to our forums!

You can run JS via PDF Tools, and something simple as "this.numPages;" should get you the desired value. I am not 100% sure though how you can take that value back to your VBA for further processing.

Working with JS via PDF-Tools is explained here:
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxt10/in ... pt_t2.html

Kind regards,
Stefan

Hi Stefan,
Did not get chance to try this out yet. Because my org's license is still with v9. The run JS features is v10. I'll need to get IT to update the version first.
Thanks!

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello lebaotrung,

Thanks for the update! Once you do get the chance - please let us know how it goes!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[biogic]

You can use PDF-Tools on the command line to extract the number of pages and write it in a text file. A command like PDFXEdit.exe /GetNumPages "input.pdf" > output.txt might work. Then, in VBA, you can read this file and retrieve the value. This is more reliable than parsing the binary with RegExp, especially for merged PDFs.

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello biogic,

Thanks for the suggestion!
However /GetNumPages never existed as a command in the Editor, so did you use some AI to help with such a command? Maybe it exists in other PDF Tools and the AI suggested it when it is not a valid one for the Editor!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[lebaotrung]

You can use PDF-Tools on the command line to extract the number of pages and write it in a text file. A command like PDFXEdit.exe /GetNumPages "input.pdf" > output.txt might work. Then, in VBA, you can read this file and retrieve the value. This is more reliable than parsing the binary with RegExp, especially for merged PDFs.

Haha this definitely works. Initially i was using another dumb method (but works). I have a tool to save as the PDF file as another pdf with the file name a weird recognition name, and at the end %[Pages], which is then read by VBA to get the number of pages. This is so stupidly simple and inefficient but it works for now.

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]