Convert to Excel command (File menu)

Use this command to convert the selected portion of the active document to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Shortcuts

Toolbar:      

Keys:          CTRL + E

Conversion

After selecting the Covert to Excel command , you will be prompted with the following dialog box:

The above dialog box gives you two options for your PDF to Excel Conversion.

1. Automatic - The default conversion option into Excel is recommended for most conversions into Excel. Under this conversion option, the software algorithm automatically determines the positioning of the Excel columns. In most cases, this will result in perfect alignment within Excel.
   
   
   In cases where the “Automatic” conversion results in column misalignments within Excel, the user may want to choose the “Custom” conversion option. The “Custom” conversion option allows the user to designate the columns prior to conversion to Excel.
   
   
2. Custom - This option allows the user to make a manual designation as to where the columns of data will be created once converted into Excel.  This designation is made visually by the user prior to conversion to Excel.
   
   The “Custom” option may be the most effective option in the following situations:
   
   • The “Automatic” conversion results in the misalignment of data within Excel.
     
   • The Document data being converted into Excel goes over multiple file pages. This is great for report data that is standardized across many pages.  
     
   • The headers and footers of the document are causing misalignments within Excel

If the "Custom" option is selected, a grid will appear on the document that appears in the Able2Extract PDF viewer based on the initial string selection (or randomly generated for a scanned/image PDF file):

Each of the grid lines above can be adjusted using the right-mouse button.  To remove a line, double-click the line using the right-mouse button.  To change the position of a line, right-click on the line, hold, and move it to its new position.  To add a line, right click on the appropriate empty space.

For multi-page reports, users may want to exclude the headers or footers from the table.  This is controlled by the horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the page - to move the horizontal lines, use the right-mouse button as described above.  The following shows how the horizontal lines can be moved to exclude the headers and footers (note - even though the top horizontal line is below the headers, the first set of headers will always be retained):

The column structure generated in the "Custom" mode will run throughout the entire document.  For different tables within a document, the initial column structure may not be appropriate. For example, the following might occur if the initial column structure for page one differed from page three:

The above selection has been chosen by using the "Select Page Range...", but the above columns need to be adjusted for this particular table (additional columns that may have been appropriate for the initial page may not be appropriate for page 3 (in this case a few extra column lines need to be removed):

To generate Excel output for the above column structure (table on page three), simply click on the page and select the data on this page and then press the icon.  The following demonstrates the output that would be generated from above selection in Excel (view is shrunk to show structure of Excel output):

If the column structure used to convert this PDF document is a commonly used structure for PDF documents that you receive, you can choose to save this column structure by selecting, "Save Custom Excel Template..." under the File menu. This way, you can apply this column structure to a similar document in the future, without having to readjust the columns each time.

You will note that the header is included at the top of the document, but headers and footers are excluded after the first header.  Separating the three page report are single Excel rows to indicate where the page breaks occur for the user.