Multi-line Floating Traps?

3 posts / 0 new
Last post
Joined: 12/02/2015 - 15:21
Multi-line Floating Traps?

Thanks again in advance for the help, all.
I've got a PDF that I need to import that is a form letter with user-selected check boxes. I had no problem building a standard layer that worked on my example file, but I thought it would be better to build it with floating traps since I'm not optimistic that each of the 2000 letters I need to read will be recognized identically by the report reader.
I've attached a snippet of the text I need to grab, shown in the report reader. For my standard layer, I used a multiline layer with the lead-in sentence as the trap. I then put an anchor in front of the "Yes" and "No" segments to grab whether or not the checkbox showed an "X". I have three different questions, each of which has identical Yes/No checkboxes, each needs to be captured - which means I can't use the "Yes" and "No" themselves for anything.
I thought I could possibly put a floating trap on the lead-in sentence in case it moves around a bit. Then, I'm not clear whether it's possible to build floating anchors to get the text in front of the words Yes and No, since that's not the line used for the actual trap. My only other thought was that I could bring in the whole row where the "Yes" and "No" appear and split it out after import. 
Any other suggestions for how I might be able to handle this? 

Joined: 01/07/2019 - 21:18

Dear All,
I am having a similar problem arising from the complicated PDF where the Column doesn't align with each other. I have made some reference online and seems like data extraction by using the script is one of the most convenient ways. Is there any solution where I can easily realign all the information from column to column without embarking on complicated data extraction script?

Joined: 01/13/2019 - 06:12

I think it would be easier to import the whole line and then parse it to obtain the values.
I imported the following data (in row 3, X was not marked by user)
101,  Yes   X No
102,X Yes     No
103,  Yes     No 
and IDEA automatically trims white spaces on the left side and the imported data looks like image 1.
Define a virtual character field with width 1 with the following criteria to get your Yes/No data
The criteria first checks whether X is present in the answer, if found and if the first character is X, then answer is Y, otherwise answer is N. If X is not found, the answer is - (dash). Now, you get image 2.