Remove Tables from existing PDF

Aspose.PDF for NET offers the capabilities to insert/create Table inside PDF document while its being generated from scratch or you can also add the table object in any existing PDF document. However you may have a requirement to Manipulate Tables in existing PDF where you can update the contents in existing table cells. However you may come across a requirement to remove table objects from existing PDF document.

In order to remove the tables, we need to use TableAbsorber class to get hold of tables in existing PDF and then call Remove.

The following code snippet also work with Aspose.PDF.Drawing library.

Remove Table from PDF document

We have added new function i.e. Remove() to the existing TableAbsorber Class in order to remove table from PDF document. Once the absorber successfully finds tables on the page, it becomes capable to remove them. Please check following code snippet showing how to remove a table from PDF document:

// For complete examples and data files, visit https://github.com/aspose-pdf/Aspose.PDF-for-.NET
private static void RemoveTable()
{
    // The path to the documents directory
    var dataDir = RunExamples.GetDataDir_AsposePdf_Tables();

    // Open PDF document
    using (var document = new Aspose.Pdf.Document(dataDir + "Table_input.pdf"))
    {
        // Create TableAbsorber object to find tables
        var absorber = new Aspose.Pdf.Text.TableAbsorber();

        // Visit first page with absorber
        absorber.Visit(document.Pages[1]);

        // Get first table on the page
        Aspose.Pdf.Text.AbsorbedTable table = absorber.TableList[0];

        // Remove the table
        absorber.Remove(table);

        // Save PDF document
        document.Save(dataDir + "RemoveTable_out.pdf");
    }
}

Remove Multiple Tables from PDF document

Sometimes a PDF document may contain more than one table and you may come up with a requirement to remove multiple tables from it. In order to remove multiple tables from PDF document, please use the following code snippet:

// For complete examples and data files, visit https://github.com/aspose-pdf/Aspose.PDF-for-.NET
private static void RemoveMultipleTables()
{
    // The path to the documents directory
    var dataDir = RunExamples.GetDataDir_AsposePdf_Tables();

    // Open PDF document
    using (var document = new Aspose.Pdf.Document(dataDir + "Table_input2.pdf"))
    {
        // Create TableAbsorber object to find tables
        var absorber = new Aspose.Pdf.Text.TableAbsorber();

        // Visit second page with absorber
        absorber.Visit(document.Pages[1]);

        // Get copy of table collection
        Aspose.Pdf.Text.AbsorbedTable[] tables = new Aspose.Pdf.Text.AbsorbedTable[absorber.TableList.Count];
        absorber.TableList.CopyTo(tables, 0);

        // Loop through the copy of collection and removing tables
        foreach (var table in tables)
        {
            absorber.Remove(table);
        }

        // Save PDF document
        document.Save(dataDir + "RemoveMultipleTables_out.pdf");
    }
}

Please take into account that removing or replacing of a table changes TableList collection. Therefore, in case removing/replacing tables in a loop the copying of TableList collection is essential.

Manipulate Tables in existing PDF