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I want to read content of pdf file when window openfiledialog appear.I use VB 2005 at winform. anybody know please help me!!!( show code

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by trpsjt2008

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If the goal is to "open" the PDF for the user, that is different from "read" or extract the PDF text programmatically. did not say which is wanted, so first decide: preview only (show to user) or parse the file contents (search, index, analyze). 's suggestion opens the PDF in the default reader; pointed to embedding a viewer. Both are fine for preview, but do not extract text.

Typical workflow to extract text in VB.NET:

  1. Let the user pick a file with OpenFileDialog and get OpenFileDialog.FileName.
  2. Use a PDF library to read pages and extract text. Below is a common iTextSharp pattern (add a reference to iTextSharp.dll in your project):
If OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog() = DialogResult.OK Then
    Dim filePath As String = OpenFileDialog1.FileName

    ' Requires reference to iTextSharp
    Dim reader As New iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfReader(filePath)
    Dim sb As New System.Text.StringBuilder()
    For i As Integer = 1 To reader.NumberOfPages
        Dim pageText As String = iTextSharp.text.pdf.parser.PdfTextExtractor.
            GetTextFromPage(reader, i, New iTextSharp.text.pdf.parser.SimpleTextExtractionStrategy())
        sb.AppendLine(pageText)
    Next
    reader.Close()

    Dim pdfText As String = sb.ToString()
    ' pdfText now contains extracted text
End If

Notes and troubleshooting:

  • Many PDFs are scanned images; text extraction will return nothing or garbage. Use OCR (Tesseract or commercial OCR) for scanned pages.
  • PDF text can be stored with custom encodings or as positioned glyphs; extraction may need cleanup and won't always preserve visual order.
  • Encrypted or password-protected PDFs require passing a password and may be unreadable.
  • Check library licenses before shipping (some libraries change to AGPL or commercial).

If the need is only preview, embedding a PDF viewer control (ActiveX, WebBrowser, or a managed PDF viewer) or launching the default reader is simplest. If extraction is required, use a parser like iTextSharp/PDFium/poppler-based tools and fall back to OCR for images.

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Member Avatar for Ranx

I want to read content of pdf file when window openfiledialog appear.I use VB 2005 at winform. anybody know please help me!!!( show code

Not exactly sure what you're after, but if you have pdf files associated with an app on the target machine, try

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(filename)
Member Avatar for trpsjt2008

That's open File

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