# Tagged PDF Inspector Compare StructTree-enabled and plain PDF extraction to see whether a document behaves like a tagged PDF and how much semantic structure it exposes > Canonical page: https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/tagged-pdf-inspector - **Category:** Developer Tools - **Keywords:** pdf, tagged pdf, struct tree, semantic structure, opendataloader ## Overview Run OpenDataLoader with and without StructTree support, then compare semantic node counts, headings, lists, and table recognition. This helps you understand whether a PDF carries useful tagged structure for accessibility, content conversion, and RAG ingestion. ## Inputs - **PDF File** (file) - **Pages** (text): e.g. 1,3,5-7 - **Include Header/Footer** (checkbox) ## When to use - When auditing a corpus of PDFs to determine if they contain reliable semantic tags for accessibility compliance. - Before building a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline to see if StructTree extraction yields better document chunking. - When troubleshooting missing headings or broken tables during automated PDF-to-HTML or PDF-to-Markdown conversion. ## How it works - Upload your target PDF file and optionally specify a page range to limit the processing time. - Choose whether to include headers and footers in the extraction analysis. - The tool processes the document twice using OpenDataLoader: once with StructTree enabled and once without. - Review the generated HTML report to compare semantic node counts, heading structures, and table recognition side-by-side. ## Use cases - Evaluating document accessibility readiness by verifying the presence and quality of internal PDF tags. - Optimizing data ingestion for LLMs by determining the best extraction strategy for complex, multi-column PDFs. - Quality assurance testing for document generation software to ensure exported PDFs contain valid semantic structures. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is a Tagged PDF? A Tagged PDF contains hidden structural metadata (a StructTree) that defines reading order, headings, paragraphs, and tables, improving accessibility and data extraction. ### Why compare extraction methods? Many PDFs have poorly constructed or missing tags. Comparing the outputs reveals whether relying on the document's internal StructTree improves or degrades the extracted content. ### Can I inspect specific pages instead of the whole document? Yes, you can use the Pages input to specify a range, such as '1,3,5-7', to focus the analysis on specific sections and speed up processing. ### What does the HTML report show? The report displays a side-by-side comparison of semantic node counts, text differences, and how elements like headings, lists, and tables are recognized in both modes. ### Does this tool modify my original PDF? No, the tool only reads the PDF to extract and analyze its structure. Your original file remains completely unchanged. ## Related tools - [Formula / Chart Heavy PDF Analyzer](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/formula-chart-heavy-pdf-analyzer): Compare local and hybrid OpenDataLoader extraction to identify PDF pages where formulas, charts, or dense visuals may need AI-assisted parsing - [PDF Header/Footer Noise Remover](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/pdf-header-footer-noise-remover): Compare extraction with and without repeated page furniture to spot header/footer noise before using PDF text in RAG, summarization, or editing workflows - [PDF Reading Order Debugger](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/pdf-reading-order-debugger): Compare raw PDF draw order against XY-Cut++ reading order to spot multi-column and layout-related extraction issues - [PDF Strikethrough Review Extractor](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/pdf-strikethrough-review-extractor): Detect strikethrough-marked text in review PDFs and generate a report for contract, policy, and revision analysis - [PDF to JSON Structure Explorer](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/pdf-to-json-structure-explorer): Extract structured OpenDataLoader JSON from a PDF and browse headings, paragraphs, tables, lists, pages, and bounding boxes in an explorer view - [OCR PDF to Structured JSON Bridge](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/ocr-pdf-to-structured-json-bridge): Extract the PDF text layer with geometry (lines by y-position, tables by column gaps, headings by font size, colon key-value pairs), then fill a user-supplied JSON Schema field by field — labels matched by normalized keys, values coerced to declared types and validated with ajv. - [PDF Image & Caption Extractor](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/pdf-image-caption-extractor): Extract images from PDFs, match nearby captions, and generate an HTML index package using OpenDataLoader - [PDF Prompt Injection Scanner](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/pdf-prompt-injection-scanner): Compare safe and unsafe PDF extraction runs to detect hidden text, off-page content, tiny text, and hidden-layer prompt injection risks ## Samples - [PDF Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/pdf-samples): Generated PDF samples from tools dated 2026-02-01 to 2026-02-10 - [Markdown Slide Deck Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/md-slide-deck-to-pdf): Remark/Marp style Markdown slide decks for testing PDF export layouts - [Time Zone Workflow Scheduler ICS Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/time-zone-workflow-scheduler-ics-samples): ICS files generated in the same structure returned by the Time Zone Workflow Scheduler, with multiple VEVENT meeting candidates exported from overlap windows - [Go Viewer Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/go-viewer-samples): Sample Go source files (structs, generics, goroutines) for the in-browser Go Viewer ## Related content - [PDF Archival, Accessibility, and Trust Review](https://elysiatools.com/en/hubs/pdf-archival-accessibility-trust): Clean scanned pages, add OCR, prepare PDF/A files, inspect accessibility structure, add bookmarks, and verify signatures before archival handoff. - [PDF Extraction and Debugging Workflows](https://elysiatools.com/en/hubs/pdf-extraction-debugging-workflows): Debug hard PDF extraction cases by checking encryption, safety, page scope, reading order, OCR, tables, review marks, and structured output. - [PDF LLM and RAG Preparation](https://elysiatools.com/en/hubs/pdf-llm-rag-prep): Turn PDFs into clean, safe, citation-ready inputs for LLM summarization, embedding, search, and RAG pipelines. - [RAG Chunking and Retrieval Prep](https://elysiatools.com/en/hubs/rag-chunking-retrieval-prep): Clean PDFs and Word files, remove extraction noise, scan hidden prompt risks, split text, score chunk quality, and package citation-ready RAG inputs.