Using Python to manipulate text formatting in PDFs provides a powerful way to automate and customize documents. With the Spire.PDF for Python library, developers can efficiently find text with advanced search options to retrieve and modify text properties like font, size, color, and style, enabling users to find and update text formatting across large document sets, saving time and reducing manual work. This article will demonstrate how to use Spire.PDF for Python to retrieve and modify text formatting in PDF documents with Python code.

• Find Text and Retrieve the Font Information in PDFs
• Find and Modify Text Formatting in PDF Documents

Install Spire.PDF for Python

This scenario requires Spire.PDF for Python and plum-dispatch v1.7.4. They can be easily installed in your Windows through the following pip command.

pip install Spire.PDF

If you are unsure how to install, please refer to: How to Install Spire.PDF for Python on Windows

Find Text and Retrieve Formatting Information in PDFs

Developers can use the PdfTextFinder and PdfTextFindOptions classes provided by Spire.PDF for Python to precisely search for specific text in a PDF document and obtain a collection of PdfTextFragment objects representing the search results. Then, developers can access the format information of the specified search result text through properties such as FontName, FontSize, and FontFamily, under PdfTextFragment.TextStates[] property.

The detailed steps for finding text in PDF and retrieving its font information are as follows:

• Create an instance of PdfDocument class and load a PDF document using PdfDocument.LoadFromFile() method.
• Get a page using PdfDocument.Pages.get_Item() method.
• Create a PdfTextFinder object using the page.
• Create a PdfTextFindOptions object, set the search options, and apply the search options through PdfTextFinder.Options property.
• Find specific text on the page using PdfTextFinder.Find() method and get a collection of PdfTextFragment objects.
• Get the formatting of the first finding result through PdfTextFragment.TextStates property.
• Get the font name, font size, and font family of the result through PdfTextStates[0].FontName, PdfTextStates[0].FontSize, and PdfTextStates[0].FontFamily properties.
• Print the result.

from spire.pdf import *

# Create a PdfDocument instance
pdf = PdfDocument()
# Load a PDF file
pdf.LoadFromFile("Sample.pdf")

# Get the first page
page = pdf.Pages.get_Item(0)

# Create a PdfTextFinder instance
finder = PdfTextFinder(page)

# Create a PdfTextFindOptions instance and set the search options
options = PdfTextFindOptions()
options.CaseSensitive = True
options.WholeWords = True

# Apply the options
finder.Options = options

# Find the specified text
fragments = finder.Find("History and Cultural Significance:")

# Get the formatting of the first fragment
formatting = fragments[0].TextStates

# Get the formatting information
fontInfo = ""
fontInfo += "Text: " + fragments[0].Text
fontInfo += "Font: " + formatting[0].FontName
fontInfo += "\nFont Size: " + str(formatting[0].FontSize)
fontInfo += "\nFont Family: " + formatting[0].FontFamily

# Output font information
print(fontInfo)

# Release resources
pdf.Dispose()

Find and Modify Text Formatting in PDF Documents

After finding specific text, developers can overlay it with a rectangle in the same color as the background and then redraw the text in a new format at the same position, thus achieving text format modification of simple PDF text fragments on solid color pages. The detailed steps are as follows:

• Create an instance of PdfDocument class and load a PDF document using PdfDocument.LoadFromFile() method.
• Get a page using PdfDocument.Pages.get_Item() method.
• Create a PdfTextFinder object using the page.
• Create a PdfTextFindOptions object, set the search options, and apply the search options through PdfTextFinder.Options property.
• Find specific text on the page using PdfTextFinder.Find() method and get the first result.
• Get the color of the page background through PdfPageBase.BackgroundColor property and change the color to white if the background is empty.
• Draw rectangles with the obtained color in the position of the found text using PdfPageBase.Canvas.DrawRectangle() method.
• Create a new font, brush, and string format and calculate the text frame.
• Draw the text in the new format in the same position using PdfPageBase.Canvas.DrawString() method.
• Save the document using PdfDocument.SaveToFile() method.

from spire.pdf import *

# Create a PdfDocument instance
pdf = PdfDocument()
# Load a PDF file
pdf.LoadFromFile("Sample.pdf")

# Get the first page
page = pdf.Pages.get_Item(0)

# Create a PdfTextFinder instance
finder = PdfTextFinder(page)

# Create a PdfTextFindOptions instance and set the search options
options = PdfTextFindOptions()
options.CaseSensitive = True
options.WholeWords = True
finder.Options = options

# Find the specified text
fragments = finder.Find("History and Cultural Significance:")
# Get the first result
fragment = fragments[0]

# Get the background color and change it to white if its empty
backColor = page.BackgroundColor
if backColor.ToArgb() == 0:
    backColor = Color.get_White()
# Draw a rectangle with the background color to cover the text
for i in range(len(fragment.Bounds)):
    page.Canvas.DrawRectangle(PdfSolidBrush(PdfRGBColor(backColor)), fragment.Bounds[i])

# Create a new font and a new brush
font = PdfTrueTypeFont("Times New Roman", 16.0, 3, True)
brush = PdfBrushes.get_Brown()
# Create a PdfStringFormat instance
stringFormat = PdfStringFormat()
stringFormat.Alignment = PdfTextAlignment.Left
# Calculate the rectangle that contains the text
point = fragment.Bounds[0].Location
size = SizeF(fragment.Bounds[-1].Right, fragment.Bounds[-1].Bottom)
rect = RectangleF(point, size)

# Draw the text with the specified format in the same rectangle
page.Canvas.DrawString("History and Cultural Significance", font, brush, rect, stringFormat)

# Save the document
pdf.SaveToFile("output/FindModifyTextFormat.pdf")

# Release resources
pdf.Close()

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