Design A Form And Add Buttons - Download Bank Statements ?

I have an awful lot of it "down" by now, in that I understand how to design a form and add buttons, how to set properties and am even learning "procedures and parameters". But I think I'm missing something, and it's probably my own fault as I jump around the book (I'm about 1/2 way through the 500 page volume, and have completed chapters from the beginning and middle) I think I understand the "Visual" part, and I think I even understand enough of the "Basic" part to get going.

I want to write a simple program to take our downloaded bank statements (what better time to do this than tax time and sort them out. They are .pdfs so I need to first copy the text and sort of "break it apart" and add tabs etc so I can import to a database (I've been playing around a lot with databases too, and have a good grasp on that part of the equation) I have been reading (in the book) about reading text files with StreamReader, and Replacing Text Within a String, etc. how to "get going..." how to even start writing a program. Do I start with a form? Do I need to create a Visual interface to run the Basic?

Are there existing examples somewhere I could "get my feet wet" working with that already have simple find/replace functions? It's almost as if I know too much about the more complex stuff like "Denoting Scope Using Variable Prefixes", but not how to write a simple program. I'm adding to this -- as I think about it, the main "Project" used throughout the book is a Picture Viewer. I think it if had been a "data replacer" or something like that, I wouldn't be asking this question! I don't want to open a picture, I want to manipulate a text file.