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SmallPDF for Excel (without installing anything) The SmallPDF Excel to convert a.PDF file sent from the user’s computer, the Dropbox or Google Drive in XLSX file. The default XML-based file format for Excel 2010 and Excel 2007. You can not store the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro code or Excel 4.0 macro spreadsheets (.xlm). Jan 13, 2011 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. Mar 03, 2014 How can I convert a PDF to a 2010 excel spreadsheet with fixed columns? Some of my rows are not in cell form but whole line merged and centered so the columns are not lined up properly. 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 is one such format.
NOTE: I wrote this article for Acrobat 9. In Acrobat X, exporting to Excel is super simple and works great. Just choose File> Save As> Spreadsheet. It’s worth the upgrade for this feature alone! |
I received this email from a paralegal at a large law firm recently:
Help! An attorney has asked me to convert PDFs we received in discovery to Excel. The PDFs are tabular in nature (probably originated in Excel). Some are scanned in from paper and others appear to be converted electronically. How do I do this?
Fortunately, Acrobat 9 offers a couple of different ways to export to Excel.
- Select table and open in Excel
This allows you to select a portion of a page and open it in Excel.
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Works best when you only need small part of the table
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Better results if the file didn’t originate from a spreadsheet - Export as Tables in Excel
This method uses some artificial intelligence to convert multiple page PDF documents to multiple worksheets in an XML-based spreadsheet file. It works best on files which were converted directly from Excel to PDF.
To open the XML-based file output generated using method 2 above, you’ll need either:
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Acrobat generally will usually do a pretty good job converting the text, but formatting and column widths will look different than the original. Acrobat only copies over the text. Formulas will not convert. Do not expect 100% fidelity.
In the full article, you’ll receive my usual step-by-step instructions.
However, when I run recdisc I get the following error message:“The selected disc cannot be used. Windows vista recovery cd. The disc which you selected does not contain a valid Windows installation. After a short while the USB recovery drive will be created.The Windows 8 recovery image is now 200MB+ compared to around 160MB for the Windows image that gets written to CD, but still easily fits on even small flash drives. I was able to follow the instructions and install recdisc on a 32-bit Vista computer using the Manual option. I verified that the version of recdisc on my computer is the version I installed today.
Converting to Excel from PDF: Copy Table as Spreadsheet
I’ve had better luck using this method for scanned documents and documents which were not originally spreadsheets.
How to use it:
- Open a PDF and OCR if it was originally scanned
Document—> OCR Text Recognition - Select the Select Text tool (cursor)
- Hold down the ALT (CMD on the Mac) key to make a rectangular selection over a table in the document.
Your cursor will change shape to: - With the text still selected, right-click and choose “Open Table in Spreadsheet”
- The table data will open in Excel
What are the other options? Copy as Table will copy the data to the clipboard. From there, you can paste it into Excel or another document. Save as Table will allow you to name the data and save it as a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file. Mac Users: Only Copy as Table and Save as Table are available. |
Converting to Excel from PDF: Save As Tables in Excel Spreadsheet
Convert Adobe To Excel Online
This method allows you export a multiple page PDF to multiple Tables in an Excel file. It seems to work best on documents which were:
- Converted directly to PDF from Excel
- Converted using Acrobat (rather than a clone)
How To Convert Adobe To Excel File
Save as Tables works better in Acrobat 9.1 Adobe greatly improved the capability to export to Excel using this method in Acrobat 9.1. Acrobat 9.0 sometimes exported XML tables that Excel could not open. Make sure you update. |
How to use it:
- Open the PDF you want to convert
- OCR the document if it was originally scanned.
Choose Document—> OCR Text Recognition - Choose File—> Save As
- From the Type list at the bottom of the window, choose Tables in Excel Spreadsheet
- Click Save
How do I open the file in Excel? Depending on your file associations, you may not be able to double-click the resulting XML file to open it in Excel. You’ll need to open Excel and choose File—> Open Where are all the pages? Each page in the PDF is converted to a different worksheet in the Excel file. Look at the tabs at the bottom of the screen. |
Batch Converting PDF to Excel
Have a lot of PDFs you want to convert to Excel? No problem! This works in any version of Acrobat 9.
- Choose File—> Export—> Export Multiple Files
- Click the Add Files button at the top of the window and locate your source PDFs
- The Output Options window appears:
A) Click Browse to select a folder for the Excel output
B) If desired, add a prefix or suffix to the filename
C)Change Export to “Tables in Excel” - Click OK