When I copy data in a table like this from a PDF, it gets translated into plain text without any delimiting characters to distinguish which column the data is in.
It would be helpful if I could highlight only a single column in the pdf at a time, but it currently tries to select left to right both columns as I highlight. Is there any trick for this?
- Dec 07, 2017 Rather than copy and paste, Acrobat X exports to an Excel workbook from where you can transfer into an existing table if required. To save a specific table from a PDF document, draw a selection box around it, right-click the selection and choose Export Selection As, then choose Excel Workbook from the file type menu.
- When I copy data in a table like this from a PDF, it gets translated into plain text without any delimiting characters to distinguish which column the data is in. It would be helpful if I could highlight only a single column in the pdf at a time, but it currently tries to select left to right both columns as I.
A PDF's content can be displayed in programs other than Adobe Reader, including Excel. Adobe Reader allows you to copy PDF content, with custom options for the copying method, which you can paste into an Excel document to illustrate a report. Aug 22, 2019 Excel gives you many more options for editing, but what if someone sends you a file in PDF format? It's easy enough to convert a PDF to just about anything and Excel.
4 Answers
Holding down the Alt key should allow you to select a column of text.
(Note: I've only tested this with Acrobat Pro, not Acrobat Reader.)
Mike FitzpatrickMike FitzpatrickYou can use the Microsoft word 'Convert to table' function outlined here.
It's not exactly what you need but at least it is quicker.
Try to upload it to Google Docs and then save as XLS file, it should work
It's not straight forward, however there are a large number of free or cheap services in the cloud for extracting such tables from PDFs.
Please find below the comparison table automated table extraction solutions according to Zanran:
So based on above, you may consider Zanran's Table Xtractor which has ability to finds the tables in your PDFs and converts them to Excel.
kenorbkenorbprotected by Community♦May 11 at 15:46
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