PDFToTextConverter: [WinError 2] The system can't find the specified file

[ehsanVIP]

Hi guys, I think what you are doing is very interesting. I am currently struggling with data Preprocessing(Tutorial 8).
When I open my own pdf file in function PDFToTextConverter, I get the following error:

[WinError 2] The system can't find the specified file

Unfortunately, I have not yet found a specific solution for it. Can you guide me?

[julian-risch]

Hi @ehsanVIP sorry for taking so long to reply to your question. Could this be a problem with read permissions? Or maybe the path to the file is wrong? Does your file have the file extension .pdf in the filename?

[Chance-Obondo]

hi i am getting the same issue with the file having a .pdf extension. what could be the issue

[Timoeller]

Hey @ehsanVIP and also @Chance-Obondo
could you please post here

1. how you defined the "file_path" parameter in PDFToTextConverter.convert() method
2. the exact path where your pdf file is (e.g. right click + properties or so)

My guess would be you just did not specify the path correctly or possibly the pdf file is actually of the wrong format.

[Chance-Obondo]

hi, so below is how I have defined the "file_path" on the PDFToTextConverter.convert() method

`converter = PDFToTextConverter(remove_numeric_tables=True, valid_languages=["en"])
doc = converter.convert(file_path='data/IEA cryptos.pdf')

print(doc)`

now the funny thing is that the TXT and DOCX converters are working but not the PDF converter.
Below, is the output I am getting:

'"pdftotext -v"' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Users\hp\PycharmProjects\AtOM1\haystackNLP\pdfConverter.py", line 16, in <module> doc = converter.convert(file_path='data/IEA cryptos.pdf') File "C:\Users\hp\PycharmProjects\AtOM1\haystackNLP\virt\lib\site-packages\haystack\file_converter\pdf.py", line 92, in convert pages = self._read_pdf(file_path, layout=False, encoding=encoding) File "C:\Users\hp\PycharmProjects\AtOM1\haystackNLP\virt\lib\site-packages\haystack\file_converter\pdf.py", line 156, in _read_pdf output = subprocess.run(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=False) # type: ignore File "C:\Program Files\Python39\lib\subprocess.py", line 505, in run with Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs) as process: File "C:\Program Files\Python39\lib\subprocess.py", line 951, in __init__ self._execute_child(args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds, File "C:\Program Files\Python39\lib\subprocess.py", line 1420, in _execute_child hp, ht, pid, tid = _winapi.CreateProcess(executable, args, FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

[Timoeller]

So you are using Windows but specify the file in Linux format (file_path='data/IEA cryptos.pdf').
Could you post the code you used for successfully converting a TXT please?

In the meantime could you use the full Windows path of the 'IEA cryptos.pdf', so starting with C:...\IEA cryptos.pdf

[Chance-Obondo]

Yes I am using windows, I have even used the whole path but the same error is what I am getting back.

Below is the code for the txt file:
`txtConverter = TextConverter(remove_numeric_tables=True, valid_languages=["en"])
doc = txtConverter.convert(file_path='data/C4Cmeeting agendas.txt')

print(doc)`

And the txt code is working perfectly.

[lalitpagaria]

@Chance-Obondo It seems your system have issue with pdftotext installation. Can you please try this https://pypi.org/project/pdftotext/ or use TIKA (https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/blob/master/haystack/file_converter/tika.py) to convert PDF to text.

'"pdftotext -v"' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

[Chance-Obondo]

Well I guess @lalitpagaria and @Timoeller we have managed to solve this problem. @lalitpagaria you are right and this link has helped https://pypi.org/project/pdftotext/ Tika is another option but I guess we just had to figure out the answer for the pdf converter for future reference. Thanks so much guys.