ExtractFoxTutorial
Every tutorial post on the ExtractFox blog.
How to decode a QR code from an image or PDF
Decode QR codes from photos, screenshots, and PDFs using pyzbar, OpenCV, and AI. Covers URLs, Wi-Fi configs, vCards, payment requests, and multiple QR codes per image.
How to extract a clean recipe from a website, video, or image
Pull ingredients and steps from recipe blogs, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram using schema.org scraping, yt-dlp transcription, and AI extraction — without wading through life stories.
How to extract and digitize handwritten text
Transcribe handwritten notes, letters, clinical notes, and historical documents using HTR tools, Tesseract with preprocessing, and AI vision models. Includes accuracy expectations by script type.
How to extract data from a filled form (PDF, scan, or photo)
Pull field values from any filled form — AcroForm PDF fields, printed text, or handwriting — with pypdf, pdfminer, and AI extraction for mixed or handwritten forms.
How to extract data from a chart or graph (image or PDF)
Reverse-engineer bar, line, pie, and scatter charts back into numbers using WebPlotDigitizer, Python, and AI extraction. Works on screenshots, report PDFs, and dashboard photos.
How to convert a PDF to Excel
Turn PDF tables and structured data into clean Excel files. Covers Tabula, pdfplumber, pandas, and AI extraction for invoices, statements, and scanned PDFs — with real column headers and numeric values.
How to convert a PDF to JSON
Turn PDFs into structured JSON for APIs, databases, and AI pipelines. Covers PyMuPDF for raw text, pdfplumber for tables, and AI extraction for any document type with schema output.
How to extract data from Zillow listings
Three ways to get structured data from Zillow — the Zillow API (Bridge Interactive), Zillow's bulk listing exports, and AI extraction from listing PDFs and screenshots.
How to extract a table from a PDF with Python
Three Python libraries for PDF table extraction — pdfplumber, Tabula-py, and Camelot — with code, when to use each, and how to handle scanned PDFs where text-based extraction fails.
Extract every image from a PDF at full quality (pdfimages, pypdf, PDFBox)
Pull embedded images out of a PDF at original resolution — pdfimages for batch, pypdf in Python, PdfPig and PDFBox on .NET and Java — plus scanned pages, masks, and when to render instead.
Extract data from a pivot table in Excel
Extract data from an Excel PivotTable with Paste Values, GETPIVOTDATA, Show Details, Power Query, or screenshot-to-Excel extraction.
How to extract photos and frames from a video
Pull a still from a video — on iPhone, Android, in DaVinci Resolve, with FFmpeg, or from a YouTube URL. The right tool depends on whether you want one frame or every frame.
Extract text from PowerPoint (.pptx): Outline View, python-pptx, speaker notes
Extract all text from a .pptx with Outline View, python-pptx (tables, groups, speaker notes), or OCR for image slides — copy-paste code for automation pipelines.
Extract EXIF and GPS metadata from a photo with ExifTool or Python
Read GPS coordinates, camera, and capture time out of a photo — one file in Preview, a whole folder to CSV with ExifTool, or in Python. Includes HEIC, RAW, and the timestamp tags that disagree.
Extract video metadata as JSON with FFprobe, MediaInfo, or yt-dlp
Copy-paste ffprobe, MediaInfo, and yt-dlp commands to extract duration, codecs, resolution, bitrate, chapters, and YouTube metadata as JSON — plus batch scripts for whole folders.
Extract hyperlinks from Excel and Google Sheets (VBA, Apps Script, Python)
Copy-paste VBA, Office Scripts, Google Apps Script, and Python openpyxl to extract the real URL behind Excel and Sheets hyperlinks — including bulk export from .xlsx XML.
Extract embedded files and attachments from a PDF
How to extract embedded files and attachments from a PDF with Acrobat, pdfdetach, qpdf, and Python. Works for Excel sheets, source data, and supporting documents.
How to extract code from a video tutorial
Extract source code from a programming tutorial video with clean screenshots, a code-aware extractor, or an FFmpeg frame pipeline for longer recordings.