[Solved] Import error: cannot import name 'open_filename' from 'pdfminer.utils

To fix the "Import error: cannot import name 'open_filename' from 'pdfminer.utils'" error, you can follow these steps:

1. Check PDFMiner Version: Ensure that you are using the correct version of PDFMiner. The function open_filename might not be available in the version you are using.
2. Update PDFMiner: If you are not using the latest version of PDFMiner, update it to the latest version. You can do this using pip:

pip install pdfminer.six --upgrade

3. Import Correctly: If you're sure that the function open_filename exists in your version of PDFMiner, make sure you are importing it correctly. Here's the correct way to import open_filename from pdfminer.utils:

from pdfminer.utils import open_filename

4. Check Installation: Verify that PDFMiner is installed correctly in your Python environment. Sometimes, re-installing PDFMiner can resolve import issues:

pip uninstall pdfminer.six
pip install pdfminer.six

5. Check File Name: Ensure that the file name you are trying to import exists and is accessible. If the file is missing or inaccessible, you'll encounter import errors.

Solution 2:

As we had installed both pdfminer and pdfminer.six, we decided to keep pdfminer.six and uninstall pdfminer. To do this, we executed the following command:

pip uninstall pdfminer

This command removes the pdfminer package from our Python environment. By keeping pdfminer.six and removing pdfminer, we ensure consistency and avoid potential conflicts between the two packages.

Solution 3:

We face a similar problem where we couldn't import the name 'open_filename' from 'pdfminer.utils'  After investigating, we found that the issue was related to using Python version 3.11.x.

Our solution was to downgrade our Python environment to version 3.8.18, and this resolved the problem. By downgrading to a lower version, we ensured compatibility with the langchain cookbook and successfully imported the necessary functions from pdfminer.utils.

While upgrading to the latest Python version is generally recommended for access to new features and improvements, in this case, compatibility issues with specific libraries necessitated a downgrade.So you can also try by upgrading to the latest Python version.