Copy Pasting PDF Tables to EXCEL

[racingsnake2000]

Hello,
Is it possible to copy a table off a pdf drawing (materials list) and past it in an excel spreadsheet and keep the same format(columns and rows)?
I have copy pasted it the usual manner, but it takes it across as a picture...
I have also saved the files as text first and tried as above. I end up losing the formatting and only get all the tables contents in the first column that I paste the clip board data to in Excel.
Any suggestions as this happens fairly often and I hate the manual data entry alternative!
Cheers

 

[Michael M]

Hi
No, it isn't possible unless you have a PDF to EXcel converter.
There are some freewares available, but thay have size/ time restrictions, etc.
Basically you have to purchase such a beast.
Or have Adobe 11 Pro, which, I think comes with some extensibility.

 

[racingsnake2000]

Hmmmm..
Yeah, file wont convert to excel directly because its a drawing.... I just need to convert the table, but it won't let me. I have saved as text and am busy now seperating manually the individual line items into columns now which willl allow me to then copy past into the required format.... It's the long way around...
Cheers anyways.

 

[ravi4ever]

If your PDF files have tables and text is selectable then from your PDF file you can copy a single column at once by holding the Ctrl or Alt key and make the selection of a particular column, copy it and then paste it to Excel. It would save a lot of time then what you are doing right now.

 

[ahayek]

Hello,
Is it possible to copy a table off a pdf drawing (materials list) and past it in an excel spreadsheet and keep the same format(columns and rows)?
I have copy pasted it the usual manner, but it takes it across as a picture...
I have also saved the files as text first and tried as above. I end up losing the formatting and only get all the tables contents in the first column that I paste the clip board data to in Excel.
Any suggestions as this happens fairly often and I hate the manual data entry alternative!
Cheers

Yes, it is possible to copy your product listing from PDF to Excel, with the format still intact, using Cogniview's software suite PDF2XL. It allows you to define the PDF to XLS conversion layout. You can preview, edit rows and cells, and determine the format of exported data.
Open your image file - mark the table - convert the table to Excel. It is that simple.

 

[Michael M]

RacingSnake
Just keep in mind that the PDF2XL download is a trial only.
I guess the option is, if you are going to do something once, it's free otherwise your up for $100 for a licence.
I must admit though, it looks pretty handy.
Thanks Ahayek.....and Welcome to the Board.

 

[racingsnake2000]

Thanks for your input peeps.
Michael, I have used some of the freewares but as you say, there are limitations... Pretty handy though.
I have also done what you suggest ravi4ever, but sometimes is wont differentiate between columns, posing problems when manually filtering text in excel.
I come across this issue fairly frequently and lets face it..... nobody likes data entry....
I'll look into PDF2XL, thanks ahayek.

cheers

 

[Cindy Ellis]

I had to copy over 19,000 pdf files to Excel for analysis...ended up writing a specific macro, and had to use SendKeys (not generally advised) to automate the task efficiently.
But...it's possible.
I'll try to find an earlier post where I provided the general framework to someone else, and will post back if I can find it.
Cindy

 

[racingsnake2000]

That would be awesome thanks Cindy!

 

[diddi]

another product you might consider is Able2Extract. it is a commercial product, but works very well. (no affiliation with this product)