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I want to convert this PDF which contains a table, into an Excel-compatible spreadsheet for the purposes of making flash cards.
Does anyone know of an automatic way to do this without manually copying each phrase into the correct column?
Chris
Posted 2014-12-03T15:01:16.140
Reputation: 131
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The PDF format from its inception (more than 20 years ago) never was intended to be host of extractable, meaningfully structured data.
Its original purpose was to be a reliable visual representation of text, images and diagrams in a document -- a kind of digital paper (that would also reliably be transferred to real paper via printing). Only later in its development more features were added, amongst them some which should help in extracting data again (google for Tagged PDF).
For some examples of problems which are posed when data scraping tables from PDFs, see this article:
Contradicting my point '1.' above, now I say this: for an amazing family of tools that gets better and better from week to week for extracting tabular data from PDFs (unless they are scanned pages), see these links:
So: go look for Tabula. If any tools can do what you want, at this time (4 years after this question was asked) Tabula is probably amongst the best for the job!
P.S.: Tabula is Free and Open Source Software, written in Ruby.
Kurt Pfeifle
Posted 2014-12-03T15:01:16.140
Reputation: 10 024
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I know this is an old post, but there are plenty of free tools that you can use for one-off conversions. Here are some examples:
You'll find lots more if you search for PDF Table to Excel in Google.
tristanojbacon
Posted 2014-12-03T15:01:16.140
Reputation: 11
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Convert PDF files to Microsoft Excel documents, extract tables. This free PDF converter and PDF creator is quick and reliable. Hope this was helpful
SolutionSurfers
Posted 2014-12-03T15:01:16.140
Reputation: 69