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Products
Power BI (Datasets)
Power BI (Dataflows)
Power Apps (Dataflows)
Excel
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Authentication Types Supported
Anonymous (online)
Basic (online)
Organizational account (online)Windows (online)
Function Reference Documentation
Pdf.Tables
Some capabilities may be present in one product but not others due to deployment schedules and host-specific capabilities.
PDF is not supported in Power BI Premium.
Prerequisites
None.
Capabilities Supported
Import
Connect to a PDF file from Power Query Desktop
To make the connection from Power Query Desktop:
Select the
PDF
option in the connector selection.
Browse for and select the PDF file you want to load. Then select
Open
.
If the PDF file is online, use the
Web connector
to connect to the file.
In
Navigator
, select the file information you want, then either select
Load
to load the data or
Transform Data
to continue transforming the data in Power Query Editor.
Connect to a PDF file from Power Query Online
To make the connection from Power Query Online:
Select the
PDF
option in the connector selection.
In the PDF dialog box that appears, either provide the file path or the URL to the location of the PDF file. If you're loading a local file, you can also select
Upload file (Preview)
to browse to the local file or drag and drop the file.
If necessary, select an on-premises data gateway to access the PDF file.
If this is the first time you've accessed this PDF file, select the authentication kind and sign in to your account (if needed).
In
Navigator
, select the file information you want, and then select
Transform Data
to continue transforming the data in Power Query Editor.
Limitations and considerations
Accessing large PDF files
You can use the following strategies to improve performance and reduce timeouts when you access large PDF files. These strategies require that you edit your usage of the
Pdf.Tables
function in either the formula bar or advanced editor.
Try selecting pages one at a time or one small range at a time using the
StartPage
or
EndPage
options, iterating over the entire document as needed.
If the PDF document is one single, huge table, the
MultiPageTables
option can be collecting very large intermediate values, so disabling it might help.
A full list of available options can be found in
Pdf.Tables
.
Handling multi-line rows
In cases where multi-line rows aren't properly identified, you might be able to clean up the data using UI operations or custom M code. For example, you could copy misaligned data to adjacent rows using
Table.FillDown
, or group and combine adjacent rows using
Table.Group
.
Power BI dataflows in a Premium capacity
When working with the PDF connector on dataflows in a Premium capacity, the PDF connector doesn't properly make the connection. To enable the PDF connector to work on dataflows in a Premium capacity, configure that dataflow to use a gateway, and confirm the connection to that dataflow goes through the gateway.
