PDF Office Processing Guide

What problem it solves

PDF automation often gets stuck beyond simple merge/split: text extraction and table parsing from text-based PDFs, OCR for scanned pages, plus generating simple PDFs, adding watermarks, and setting passwords all require different tools. pdf-official2 maps these common operations to concrete tool paths so you do not have to guess across libraries.

How it works

It organizes workflows into Python libraries and command-line tools:
- pypdf for basic merge, split, metadata, and rotation;
- pdfplumber for layout-aware text and table extraction;
- reportlab for creating single- or multi-page PDFs;
- qpdf, pdftotext, and pdftk for quick merging, text conversion, or page handling;
- Scanned PDFs typically go through image conversion before pytesseract OCR.

A useful sequence is to identify the PDF type first: use pdfplumber for text-based files, preprocess scanned pages, and use reportlab Canvas or Platypus for generated reports.

Boundaries

It is aimed at scriptable, repetitive PDF tasks, not professional typesetting or complex document workflows. PDF form filling is directed to forms.md, and advanced usage/troubleshooting to reference.md. Real availability depends on installed Python packages and system tools; output quality is affected by the source PDF structure, table borders, and scan clarity.