Difference between PDF activities and DU Activities

[rnahasnahasuddin (RN)]

Hi,

I have a scenario to get the page count of a pdf file.

Upon checking I found that there shows two activities of different packages.

Is there any difference with these activities. Is it ok to use the DU activities?

[V_Roboto_V]

Yes there is a difference. You can use anything that deems fit for your use case.

In terms of usage,

1. The Document Understanding based Get PDF Page Count activity, you need to specify the Input File as LocalResource.FromPath("C:\\.....yourPath..\\.....\\FileName.pdf"). Because, it expects an IResource as an Input.

2. As for the App Integration, you can just specify the path as a string.

Sample ScreenShot:

Below is an explanation (LLM Generated )

Yes, there is a difference between the two “Get PDF Page Count” activities in UiPath:

1. App Integration → PDF → Get PDF Page Count

• This activity is part of the UiPath.PDF.Activities package.
• It is typically used for handling standard PDFs that are not scanned or image-based.
• It works well for extracting page count from text-based PDFs.

2. Document Understanding → Get PDF Page Count

• This activity is part of UiPath.DocumentUnderstanding framework.
• It is designed for use within the Document Understanding workflow, which includes OCR and data extraction.
• It may be more suited for processing scanned PDFs or PDFs with complex structures.

If this solves your query, Do mark it as a Solution.
Happy Automation

[ashokkarale]

@rnahasnahasuddin,

In simple words, if your requirement is only about getting page count use PDF package activity. This will keep your package size smaller compared to DU activity.

If your bot is already using DU, use DU activity as you won’t require additional PDF activities package to be installed for this.

[Rahul_Rajendran]

Hi @rnahasnahasuddin PDF activities primarily focus on basic operations such as reading, extracting, separating, or merging PDF files.

Document Understanding (DU) goes beyond simple text extraction.

Document Understanding is particularly useful when working with datasets containing multiple document templates, such as semi-structured data (e.g., invoices from different vendors) or diverse document types. It falls under Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), integrating Machine Learning and AI to ensure precise data extraction.

You can refer :
academy.uipath.com/courses/uipath-document-understanding-overview

Also

2. PDF vs DU Activities how to choose || UiPath DU Concepts

[Anil_G (Anil Gorthi)]

@rnahasnahasuddin

There is no difference as such..

As part of recent changes pdf packages have been merged with du packages …so you see it under them..pdf alone were the previous separate packages

Cheers