Count Number of Pages in PDF with Google Script

The Google Documents API doesn’t offer a method to get the number of pages in a document. Dave Lam has an interesting workaround that will not only help you count the pages in a Google Document but of any PDF file that’s in your Google Drive.

The idea is to convert the Google Document into PDF and then parse the content of the PDF document as a text file using Regular Expressions.

function countPDFPages() {

  var blob = DocumentApp.getActiveDocument().getAs("application/pdf");
  var data = blob.getDataAsString();

  var re = /Pages\\/Count (\\d+)/g;
  var match;
  var pages = 0;

  while (match = re.exec(data)) {

    var value = parseInt(match[1]);

    if (value > pages) {
      pages = value;
    }

  }

  Logger.log("Total PDF pages = " + pages);

  return pages;
}

Amit Agarwal is a web geek, solo entrepreneur and loves making things on the Internet. Google recently awarded him the Google Developer Expert and Google Cloud Champion title for his work on Google Workspace and Google Apps Script.

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